


Luck Be A Lady

by XFilesinAMajor



Series: GLOW [7]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:14:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 61,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23198410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XFilesinAMajor/pseuds/XFilesinAMajor
Summary: Picks up right where Time Out of Mind left off. Stan and Teagan are still dealing with the fallout from her time travel jaunt. They're actually going to be dealing with it for a very long time; big changes are afoot in the Pines-Kettle household.
Relationships: Stan Pines/Original Female Character(s)
Series: GLOW [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1574239
Comments: 6
Kudos: 11





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I started this one weeks and weeks ago, but I typically try to finish the whole story before I start posting. That way I don't crap out on you guys and leave it incomplete.
> 
> In this case, I have NOT finished writing it yet. I've just decided to be brave, start posting anyway, and trust that whoever reads these will hold me accountable to finish it!

“Teagan, I’m being serious here. Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

“You know,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest, “maybe if you’re so worried about heart attacks, you should consider a diet that’s not half sugar and half bacon.”

“Yeah, yeah.” My boyfriend flapped away my argument, since it didn’t go with the dramatic point he was trying to make. “I’m serious here!”

“So am I. You need to take care of yourself, honey.” I knew I was changing the subject. I was okay with that.

“What I need is for you to stop scaring the shit outta me!” Except Stan refused to let the subject change. “First, the firefly thing. Then you get yourself abducted by Crampelter and h—”

“Those human trafficking assholes were _not_ my fault!”

“And _then_ , you go for a walk in the woods and complete vanish for a day and a half—”

“You _know_ where I was!” I snapped before he could finish. It was three days ago. We’d had this discussion already.

“I didn’t when I was up all night thinking I’d lost you,” he snapped back at me. “And _now_ , before I’ve even gotten over that last one, you’re telling me—”

“Okay I _get_ it!” I exploded. I’d been nervous going into this conversation, and he was _not_ helping matters. “I’m just a big screw up! I stress you out more than all the kids combined, I _get_ it!”

I stalked out of the room. I heard Stan following me, and stopped after only descending three stairs. This wasn’t a talk I could run away from, and I certainly didn’t want to have it in the living room downstairs.

I couldn’t make myself look at him, though. Mostly because I knew he was absolutely right, and I was furious with myself. Especially because, unlike all the crazy stuff I’d kind of stumbled into since coming to Gravity Falls, this latest one was actually _my fault_.

“Sorry,” I muttered bitterly, sitting down on the step, propping my elbows on my knees, and resting my head in my hands. “ _I’m_ stressed, too.”

“Sure you are.” He eased himself down onto the step next to me with a soft grunt of effort and threw his arm over my shoulder. “I guess maybe I could’ve handled it better, too.”

I shot him a sideways glance from behind my hands, smiling ever so slightly. “Maybe just a little.”

Stan sighed. “I figured you were joking. Seems like something you’d do.” Well, he had my number there, for sure. That’s what I got for stealing his car as a prank last fall.

“I wish I _was_ ,” I answered miserably. “I just got home! We haven’t even recovered all your memories from ’89 yet. I was looking _forward_ to that.”

It was understandable that Stan was feeling stressed, honestly. After mysteriously vanishing on everyone, I’d turned back up the next day with a story about spending a month with him back in 1989, just over a quarter-century ago—something he had zero memory of. Normally, if you spent a month (out of an otherwise miserable decade) falling in love with a woman who turned up on your doorstep in the middle of a snowstorm, you’d remember it. But due to some complicated memory wiping that went on a year before Stan and I met, he’d drawn a complete blank when I told him. We’d been working on fixing that the past few days, in between work and other responsibilities, and we were making some progress.

But I’m sure it was just as frustrating for him as it was for me. And he’d been really busy at work lately. And let’s not even touch all the life changes he’d been through in the last year, like moving in with me and my sons.

And now I was dropping this on him.

“So,” he said heavily after a minute of unhappy silence, “this is real.”

I stared at my feet, feeling sick. “Yup.”

“How?” He asked, which was a pretty stupid question coming from a man in his 60s who’d been around the block plenty of times. He must have realized it, because he amended the question with a scowl. “It’s got something to do with _him_ , doesn’t it.”

Not this again! “Stan, _he_ is _you_.”

His scowl only deepened. “Scuse me, I’d just like to remember conceiving my own kid!”

I winced. Yeah, that would definitely sting. The fun part, in this case, had happened more than twenty-five years ago, in a portion of his mind that got blasted away with a memory gun. For me, it was just a few weeks ago. Life in Gravity Falls could be really, really confusing sometimes.

I let out a long sigh, pressing my hands hard into my face as if it could somehow make the problem go away. “So what do you want to do?”

“What do _you_ want to do?” he countered.

Not helpful. “No, really,” I said, making myself take my hands down and look him in the face. He deserved that much. “I’m asking you.”

“I dunno,” he answered at once, without even stopping to consider the question. “It’s your decision.”

Way to deflect, Stan. But I couldn’t really blame him. It wasn’t the kind of decision I wanted to make either, and I’d had a fifteen minutes longer to think about it than he had. “It was my screw up,” I insisted stubbornly. “You should get a say in the consequences.”

He kept one hand around my shoulder, but he held the other one out in front of him and stared at it. His face was closed off; no way for me to tell what he was thinking. “You’re putting this on me?”

I groaned. “You’re such a pessimist sometimes! I’m not trying to put anything on you. I’m trying to make you feel like you have a say.” This time, instead of putting my face back into my hands, I pressed it against his shoulder. “I screwed up. I thought having something I only needed to worry about every three months would make it _harder_ to slip up. But when I went back, I was so focused on causality and the stupid firefly pills and everything else—it didn’t even cross my mind! I hate that!”

I balled a hand into a fist and slammed it into my thigh, trying to vent some of the frustration. “I fucked it up! And if I could just get rid of it and go on with our lives, that’d be one thing, but I _can’t_ , because I love you, and I’m fucking terrified, but part of me wants this because it’s _you_ , but maybe _you_ don’t want it, and we’ve only been dating a year, and what if this wrecks everything? I didn’t mean to, honey! I’m so sorry.”

The tears were streaming before I even finished my frantic jumble of thoughts, but as soon as the words stopped tumbling out of my mouth I started sobbing in earnest.

“Ha!” Stan said, totally unhelpful. “I _knew_ you already knew what you wanted to do!” I kept crying into him.

“What’s going on?” Horace’s voice floated down the stairs to the third floor before the rest of him came into view. Despite the fact that he could both float and pop in and out of view when it suited him, in this case it just meant that he’d started talking when he was halfway down the steps.

Shit. I hadn’t realized anyone was listening. Though given there were currently no less than five kids (well, four of them were teenagers) sharing our ancient three-story home, there was almost _always_ someone listening. Or trying not to listen. Or making so much noise that _we_ had no choice but to listen to _them_.

I immediately sat up straight and started wiping at my wet face, but it was too late. “I’m fine, Horace,” I lied valiantly.

He stood on the landing near our bedroom door, a ten-year-old boy in outdated clothes and messy blond hair that stuck up in twelve different directions, and he stared us down. “How many times have you told us not to lie to you?”

“I don’t know.” My nose was trying to drip, too, but I’d have to get up and walk all the way to the bathroom if I wanted to blow it. “A lot.”

Horace nodded, looking infinitely disappointed in me. “All the time.”

I only said it that often because they were perpetually trying to get away with truly stupid, pointless lies. Sure, Dave, I believe you and your boyfriend wouldn’t do _anything_ dubious if I let him sleep over. Sure, Nicky, I believe you got that D in history because the teacher had it in for you. Sure, Horace, I believe you would _never_ go incorporeal and try to spy on Mabel while she was changing for bed.

Right.

However. It was best to set a good example, and Horace had clearly caught me in a lie. “Fair point,” I told him with a tired, red-eyed smile. “We’re not ready to discuss it yet. It’s adult stuff. But I really am okay.”

He chewed on that for a minute, but Stan helped things along by glaring at him until he nodded. “Okay. Do you need a hug?”

“I got it covered, kid,” Stan told him gently but firmly. “Move along.” As soon as Horace was out of sight, he turned his attention fully to me again. “Can we take this back into the bedroom?”

“Yeah.” I pushed myself back to my feet. “That’s probably smart.” Besides, then I could get a tissue. The distraction from Horace had been enough to stop my crying for now, but my nose was still tickling. I hurried ahead into our room and blew my nose; Stan followed slowly and shut the door behind us.

I sat down on the bed and looked up at him helplessly. “I don’t know what to do. But I had to tell you. I couldn’t not tell you.”

He glanced over at the little plastic test lying on top of our bed. “Are you sure? Don’t you need to go see a doctor or something?”

I nodded glumly. “I will. But those tests are pretty reliable these days.” The thought I’d already had several times since buying the stupid thing at the store came back into my head. This time, with Stan home, I had someone to share it with. “Though, I mean, I’m way too old for this. Once my body catches on to the fact that I’m not 25…well, miscarriages are pretty common. Maybe it’ll just sort itself out?”

“And if it doesn’t?” Stan hadn’t sat down yet, which I read as a sign of his continued agitation. “Is that something you want to take a chance on?”

“You want me to get rid of it now,” I sighed. Logically, I shouldn’t have been disappointed. But I was anyway.

“I didn’t _say_ that,” he snapped, plonking down next to me and clenching his hands. “But I…Teegs. You can’t _count_ on me.”

“Of course I can,” I snapped back. “I’ve been counting on you for almost fourteen months, and you’ve never once let me down.”

“That’s not the same thing!” I could definitely hear the fear coming through in his voice now.

I scooted back on the bed, crossing my legs under me so that I could face him instead of sitting side by side. I took his hands. “Sure it is. I trust you, Stan. I think I know you well enough by now, don’t I? I know most of your faults, and you know mine. You’re my family. I love you. And I know that when all the cards are down, when it’s important, you always come through. So while I can totally get why you’d be scared, and at the _very_ least need time to think…I think you could do it.”

“And if I can’t?”

I met his gaze dead on, my face serious. Now that _he_ was freaking out, it was easier for me to hold onto some semblance of calm. “If you _can’t_? You faced down a chaos demon, honey. You restarted a portal constructed by a couple of geniuses. You spent time in prison and still came out a nice guy. You created your own business. You live in a house full of teenagers. You got Dave to like you. Why do you think there’s _anything_ you can’t do?”

I could tell he wanted to be pleased by this list of achievements, especially because I truly meant what I was saying. But his fear of the unknown was still in the forefront, and he flapped his hand to dismiss my faith in him. “Demons and teenagers are different. I don’t know the first thing about _babies_.”

At that, I smiled. “Well, they’re more work. You have to pay a lot closer attention to them, because they break easier. They’re exhausting. But they’re a lot less complicated. I’m sure we could handle it.” I paused, and my smile wavered as I took a deep breath. “That is, assuming we _want_ to. I mean, we’re _so close_ to getting the current batch into adulthood. Another five or six years, and it’ll just be Horace around here. The older they get, the less they need us. If we do this, and if nothing goes wrong, that’s another _eighteen_ years of virtually no privacy.”

He flinched as the reality of that set in. “I’ll be in my _eighties_.”

“And I’ll be…” I did some quick mental math. “I’ll be sixty. That’s fucked up.”

“ _You’re_ the one pushing for it,” he pointed out.

“Sure, because…Stan, haven’t you ever _wanted_ to be a dad?”

He went silent. I tried to wait patiently. “I guess I’ve thought about it a few times.” He scratched the back of his neck thoughtfully. “I feel like there was this time, years ago…” A faraway look came into his eyes, like he was chasing a thought—I held my breath, but the memory must have escaped him. He shook his head. “No one ever wanted to have a kid with me. Kinda a moot point, ya know?”

That hurt. But it was true, he’d told me so before. The last steady girlfriend he really had was back in high school. I’d been assuming he’d view this as the same disaster I would, but maybe I should have come at it differently. Maybe if I’d been excited instead of a walking pit of dread and guilt, he’d have responded better. “Oy.” It was tempting to put my face back in my hands, but I resisted the urge. “ _I_ would have wanted to, you know.”

There was a hint of bitterness in his eyes when he cast me a sideways glance. “No you didn’t. You’re on birth control. We’re only having this talk now cause it didn’t work.”

“Because I’m _old_ ,” I responded in frustration. “I said _would_ have, not _did_. I figured when we met you were _way_ past the point of wanting to be a parent. I didn’t even know if I could still conceive anyhow. And we’ve only been together about a year. When was I supposed to bring it up?”

Reluctantly, he gave a miniscule nod of acknowledgement to that. I sighed in exasperation. “It’s not like _you_ brought it up, either! If it was something you _wanted_ , I probably would have considered it! I would have been scared shitless just like I am now, but at least I would have gone into it knowing that you weren’t going to be _mad_!”

Stan’s head jerked up and his eyes searched mine. “You thought I was gonna be _mad_?”

“ _Yes_!” I exclaimed, the word coming out too loud now that he was finally getting it. “You hate people relying on you! You hate spending money! You hate people forcing responsibilities on you! I figured you’d think I was trying to…to trap you, or something. Or that I was throwing away our future together.”

His voice was almost distant when he answered at last, but he didn’t sound uncertain. “I’m not mad.”

I let out a long, shaky sigh of relief, and squeezed his hand. “You’re not? Really?”

“Nah.” He still sounded distant, wrapped up in thought. His voice was almost _too_ even. “I…don’t know _what_ I am. But I’m not mad. I get how it’d happen. You’re not a screw-up, sweetie. And most of the time, you don’t stress me out.” He hesitated. “You weren’t serious about the bacon, were you?”

I don’t think he was actively trying to make me laugh, but it worked anyway. My face lit up in amusement, and I looked up from our hands to smile at him. “I’m not kidding about wanting to keep you around another twenty or thirty years. _Regardless_ of what happens with this. And if that means eventual changes then yes, I might slip a few more salads into your diet. But I have no desire to make you miserable.”

I could actually see some of the tension slip out of his shoulders. Note to my future self: if you want to have a serious discussion with Stan, don’t start it by threatening to take away bacon…or red meat, soda, or candy. Better safe than sorry.

He glanced toward the test on the bed again. “We have a house full of kids, and we’re talking about adding another one.”

“I know. I’m insane.” I started laughing again, because it was better than crying. And the whole thing _was_ ridiculous. “I’m 41! I can’t have another kid. What the hell am I thinking? I’m way too old!”

“ _You’re_ too old?” Stan retorted, also showing signs of amusement in with his panic. “I’m 63! I can’t be a _dad_!”

“Hey!” I held up a finger to emphasize the superiority of my claim. “ _You’re_ not the one who has to carry it for nine months!”

“Not to mention the house is already full up,” he pointed out. “When Ford’s in town he _already_ has to sleep on the sofa. Where are you gonna put a baby?”

“Ughhhhh.” I ran my free hand over my face, but at least this time I wasn’t hiding behind it. “I can’t believe we’re even considering this. Why aren’t you talking me out of it?”

“You _want_ me to talk you out of it?”

“Yes. No. I…no. You’re _really_ okay with this?”

Stan snorted. “I’m…I dunno. Scared, I guess. But you already know I’m not gonna take a hike, doncha. If you think I can do it…” His brows pulled down sharply in the middle, and the lines around his mouth stood out as he frowned doubtfully. “You better be right.”

This time, I got to my knees and twisted myself around to embrace him. “I know I’m right. And…” I pulled far enough back to rest my forehead against his, weighing my words carefully. “If we’d been together ten years ago, I would have wanted to do this. Intentionally. You know that, right? It’s important that you know that. And even though it’s totally crazy and _not_ intentional, I want to go through with it now. Because I absolutely want to have a kid with you.”

A hint of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “You’re crazy.”

“I already said that, didn’t I?” I laughed as all the emotions roiling in me searched for an outlet. “I can’t believe we’re really doing this!” For a moment, the fear overtook the exhilaration. I took a deep breath, trying to calm my nerves. “We’re really doing this? We should talk to the doctor.”

“Yeah, fine, make an appointment.” His voice was sliding back toward detachment, and he went quiet for a minute. “Damn it! Sonofabitch!” he spat out angrily when he did speak again. “I _gotta_ get those memories back now! I gotta.” He met my eyes, letting me see how badly it mattered. “I _gotta_.”

I nodded, pulling him into another tight hug. “Then we will. Don’t worry. We still have to find those pictures and notes and everything. And this weekend we’ll go visit the Shack together. Maybe that’ll trigger something.”

“It better trigger more than _something_ ,” he muttered sulkily.

“I promise you,” I told him, holding up a hand as if I was swearing an oath. “I will not rest until we have regained every last one of those memories.”

Stan pointed a finger at me. “And you’re _not_ gonna take away bacon.”

I changed it up, putting my hand over my heart instead. “I will not take away bacon.” Then I paused. “Though if this pregnancy is anything like Nicky, you might have to cook it yourself. While I’m out of the house.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Why would it stop you cooking?”

“Oh, honey.” I smiled and shook my head. “You have _no idea_ what we’re in for.”

*

“Whaddya _mean_ you have the letters, too?”

It was later the same night. Maybe we should have waited until emotions and stresses weren’t quite so fresh, but Stan was _really_ determined to get his 1989 memories back now. And Mabel had told us where she’d gotten the photos she’d showed me last summer, the ones from that exact time period.

Ford.

That was surprising, given Ford hadn’t been anywhere near our dimension in 1989, but it wasn’t necessarily _incriminating_. Stan had called him up immediately; as far as I could tell, he just intended to ask his twin whether he still _had_ the old snapshots in question.

He made the call from the dining room while I grated cheese for dinner, so I could hear nearly every word. There was no mention of our news yet, which was a relief. I wouldn’t have put it past him to blab it to his brother immediately, and with my luck one of the kids would probably walk in on the conversation before we’d had a chance to tell _them_. Which I wasn’t ready to do yet. So I heard Stan’s side of the conversation as he filled Ford in on what everyone in the family has been up to the past few days, and asked a few awkward questions about life out on the east coast working for the men in black. Then he got right to the point.

I couldn’t hear Ford’s answers, but I was able to deduce that yes, he remembered the photos in question and yes, he still had them in his possession. What Stan asked next was something along the lines of “What are _you_ doing with them, anyway? You weren’t anywhere near the place for what, twenty more years?” And that was when I set down the block of parmesan and started paying _full_ attention, because what he said next was “Whaddya _mean_ you have the letters, too?”

Whaddya mean you have the letters too.

Those words were as much of a gut-punch to me as whatever Ford said before it must have been for Stan. I walked into the dining room, shared an anxiety-filled look with Stan, and sat down next to him where I could just overhear most of his twin’s response.

“—your things after Weirdmaggedon. I know it was an invasion of privacy, alright? But we needed anything we could get that might bring your memories back. So yes, I went through your drawers.”

I could tell from a quick glance that Stan was seething. “I can get you going through my stuff,” he told his brother through gritted teeth. “What I can’t wrap my head around is you _keeping_ it!”

There was only a second of hesitation on Ford’s end of the line. Maybe it wasn’t even hesitation, but surprise. “Of _course_ I had to keep it!”

Oh, he had no idea how lucky he was that he’d saved my life. “Put him on speaker,” I ground out through my own clenched teeth.

“Hang on.” Stan had to pull the phone back from his ear and stare at it for a few seconds before finding the right icon to tap. “Teegs is here, she wants to hear this too.”

“Hello, Teagan.” Ford’s voice now came through loud, clear, and not remotely apologetic. “How ar—”

“Ford, how _could_ you?” I demanded, cutting him off furiously. He didn’t answer immediately, so I repeated the question. “How _could_ you?”

For the span of a few more seconds, there was silence. Then Ford awkwardly cleared his throat. “I had to, obviously.”

“ _Obviously_?” Stan repeated angrily. “I don’t see anything _obvious_ about it, genius.”

Ford sighed. “When I realized what the notes in that jar meant, I could hardly give them back to you. There was far too much at stake. It actually made me relieved, in a way, that we _had_ wiped your memory! You two very nearly destroyed causality, you know.”

It was his scolding, superior, almost professorial tone that got me. As if I hadn’t spent the entire time I was in the past worrying about exactly that. “We were trying _not_ to!” I snapped at him. “I didn’t _ask_ to go back to 1989, what was I supposed to do? Even if I _hadn’t_ told him who I was and how I felt about him—which would have meant spending the whole time I was there _lying_ to him, by the way, no thank you—he would still have recognized me when we met, right? So _please_ , Stanford, share your infinite knowledge with us, tell me what _exactly_ I was supposed to do.”

He sighed again. Yeah, no way he was missing the sarcasm dripping from that last sentence. Luckily, Stan looked nearly as furious as I was. That was good, because I had no desire to come between the two of them. “I would have advised not going to the Shack in the first place, but I’m sure you had your reasons.”

“What a generous assumption of you to make,” I fumed. “I had a sprained ankle, hypothermia, and had no idea I’d gone back in time. But next time I’ll be sure to steer clear of the only inhabited place for miles and die in the snow instead.”

“I had no idea,” Ford replied uncomfortably. “The notes didn’t mention that. Of course you took the best course of action at the time. But that doesn’t change the fact that y—”

“You _knew_?” Stan growled, sounding dangerous enough that even _I_ cringed. “All this time? You _knew_ about her? You knew last spring, when you took that job, that she was gonna turn up? When she almost burned up, when she got kidnapped, you knew she was still gonna be around here in 2014 and you didn’t _say_ anything? _Last Saturday_ I called you in a panic because we couldn’t find her, and you’re telling me you _knew_?”

“I did assure you on Saturday that I thought she was just fine,” Ford murmured apologetically.

“ _Thought_ , right.” He leveled a nasty glare at the phone. “Were you _ever_ gonna tell me?”

“I, er…I suppose thought you two would work it out on your own?”

“I wrote those notes for _him_!” I cut back in, angry for so many different reasons. “You had no business stealing them!” The thought of Ford _reading_ through of all of them made me feel faintly violated, even though I generally liked him knowing that I adored his twin.

“Again, I had no idea what they were when I stumbled upon them,” Ford responded with a hint of irritation. “I was searching for things to _help_ him.”

“And knowing there was someone out there who loved me wouldn’t help. Got it.”

How could Ford make even his _sighs_ sound superior and irritating? “Stanley, if you’d gotten those memories back, you could never have been natural around her! When you met last summer, it would invariably have created a paradox, possibly destroyed the world, and certainly impeded your relationship. I was doing you a _favor_!”

“Some favor!” Stan retorted. I heard something behind me and turned around; our voices must have gotten loud enough to draw the kids, because everyone but Dave was hovering nervously in the entranceway to the room. I closed my eyes, wishing I could undo _so_ much of today, and nudged Stan. He followed my gaze, glared stormily at the kids, and then deflated slightly.

“What’s going on with Grunkle Ford?” Mabel asked, looking concerned.

“Is that the kids?” Ford asked, meaning he’d heard her.

It was my turn to sigh. “Yes. And everything’s fine.” Horace crossed his arms and gave me a seriously doubtful look. “I wrote Stan some notes while I was back in 1989, and we just found out Ford has had them for two years. And never mentioned it to us.”

Dipper and Nicky winced. Horace’s eyes got wide. Mabel clapped her hands to her mouth in excitement. “So wait wait wait. Grunkle Ford, you can help him get his memories back? For real?”

Ford’s voice warmed as he spoke to his niece. “I can’t make any promises, but it does seem very likely that these items will help.”

Realistically, the back of my brain was telling me that Ford had done the right thing. By holding those notes back, he’d allowed our time loop to exist without any potential fallout. Everything on both sides of Weirdmaggedon had been genuine and straightforward between me and Stan. That was a gift.

But did he really have to be such a know-it-all about it?

“Then send them to us,” I said, since Stan was still glaring mutinously at the phone. “Overnight them if you can.”

“You coulda told me Saturday,” Stan continued to seethe. “I get why you wouldn’t right after the triangle jerk, okay, but you coulda told me Saturday!”

“Yes, because you were acting perfectly calm and rational at the time and would have taken the news so well,” Ford shot back. Apparently, he’d had enough of being attacked for daring to save the world.

“I woulda been a lot calmer if I’d known she was safe!”

“Fine, I’m sorry. There. Happy?”

“No.”

“Do you not understand that I d—”

Stan hung up on him.

There was a collective gasp in the dining room, and the kids all stared at him as though he’d committed a heinous crime—which, let’s be fair, he probably had. Just not right now.

“What?” Stan barked defiantly at them. “He was just gonna keep going on about saving the world, waiting for us to fall at his feet and thank him. He can take his _favor_ and shove it right up his—” 

I put a quelling hand on his arm and managed to slap a smile on my face as I turned to the kids. “It was probably _better_ to get off the phone before either of them said anything they’d regret. Don’t worry, we’ll get it all sorted out before he gets here for vacation.” That was still almost two weeks away…hopefully it would be enough.

“He _should_ have told you Saturday!” Nicky declared, rising to Stan’s defense. “If he’d just _said_ Mom was back in the 80s when she went missing, none of us would have freaked out.”

“That’s what _I_ said!” Stan exclaimed.

“Are they _love_ notes?” Mabel asked, her eyes shining at the idea of romance. “Do _we_ get to see them when they arrive?”

I tried to think about the content of all those notes. I didn’t _think_ I’d written anything too suggestive. But I’d feel safer checking through them first. “Maybe.” Since Ford already saw them, I didn’t really see the point in imagining we had any sort of privacy.

“So wait,” Dipper spoke up. “Ford’s known about you _all along_?”

Stan’s lip curled. “Yep.”

“Wow.” Dipper had the nerve to sound _impressed_. “I never would have guessed!”

Despite the fact that putting a knife in my hand right then wasn’t exactly advisable, I wanted to get back to doing something productive and distracting. I stalked back into the kitchen with a full entourage trailing behind me.

“What are you cooking?” Horace asked with polite interest.

“When’s it gonna be ready?” Nicky asked more urgently.

“Where’d you hide the time tape?” Dipper had been trying to surprise me into answering that question for the last few days. So far, I hadn’t fallen for it.

“Paella, forty-five minutes, Dipper leave it alone.” I resumed slicing a yellow pepper.

“You need to pitch that thing into the middle of the lake,” Stan said darkly. “They’re gonna find it otherwise.”

“He’s right, we totally will,” Mabel agreed happily.

“What do you even need it for?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see all four of them exchange looks before Nicky said airily, “Just for research!”

What I said earlier about them telling me totally unbelievable lies? This was exactly the sort of thing I meant. I raised my eyebrows but didn’t feel like arguing with them right now. I’d had enough unpleasant conversations for one evening. “So what’d you guys get up to today?”

Since it was a weekday, I’d spent most of it sitting at my desk at work rather than relaxing at home or helping out at the Shack. And then as I got off work I’d had to stop by the store to buy groceries and a pregnancy test. Which Allison at the check-out would absolutely be gossiping about by tomorrow. Damn it! I’d written that off at the time because I didn’t think I really _was_ pregnant when I bought the test. I just wanted to be _sure_ that I _wasn’t_ before I gave myself my tri-monthly injection of birth control. Seeing that little plus sign turn up had been a hell of a shock.

This had really been a heck of an evening in general. Not that it was all bad, but good grief. I could use some distraction from the younger generation.

“I need more library books,” Horace announced, flopping into one of the kitchen chairs with an air of dejection. “When does Phineas and Ferb come back on?”

“You can use the internet just as well as I can,” I told him, since I had no idea. “Give me a list of what you want from the library.”

“I’ll take a look,” he agreed, not sounding fully satisfied. I could hardly blame him. With Dave off at his job and Nicky off at the Shack with the twins, the summer days were really dragging for the poor kid. Maybe when Ford visited in a few weeks, he’d be able to figure out some way to help Horace leave the house.

Stupid Ford.

I stopped slicing to glance around the kitchen again. Nicky was ransacking the fridge despite knowing that dinner would be ready soon. Horace was still looking glum at the kitchen table. Dipper leaned against the counter, his thumbs flying as he tapped something into his phone. Mabel was lying on the floor rubbing the stomach of her pet pig. Stan was nowhere to be seen, damn it. Though I wasn’t surprised he’d found somewhere else to be. It was chaos in here, and he had a lot to process. I listened hard and made out the sound of the tv from the living room. Good.

“Anything interesting happen at the Shack?” I asked the room at large.

“Mabel found a patch of poison ivy,” Dipper remarked innocently.

Interesting, since the only way they’d have stumbled onto any poison ivy would be by poking around the woods. It was possible they’d been doing hanging signs or doing actual work out there. This was Gravity Falls, after all—anything was _possible_. I held my tongue and moved on to chopping an onion. “That sucks. Did you get some itch cream?”

“Oh yeah,” she agreed brightly. “Abuelita got me sorted out right away.”

“Yeah, and then you stayed in there for _hours_ ,” Nicky interjected. “While _we_ unloaded a van full of merch for the gift shop.”

“Oh good, the new shirts finally arrived?” The printer Stan usually bought from was notoriously slow (probably why his rates were so low), but that coupled with an increase in tourists this summer meant we’d nearly run out of stock on some things. I was relieved to hear we could stop worrying about that.

“The shirts,” Dipper nodded, “ _and_ the hats, _and_ the snow globes, _and_ a bunch of office supplies Stan didn’t warn us about.”

“He dropped a box of snow globes,” Nicky informed me.

I winced in sympathy. “Bet Stan loved that.”

“If by _loved_ you mean _shouted a lot_ , then yeah.” Dipper said bitterly.

“I told you, he’s still all grouchy from Teakettle’s trip last weekend.” Mabel had rotated on the floor, now resting her head on Waddles’ side as she stretched out her long legs.

“And that’s why you hid in the living room with Abuelita for two hours?” her brother demanded, though there wasn’t much heat to the accusation.

“Of course not! I stayed in there because I was helping Melody look at _wedding_ dresses!”

Ah, yes. As an adult, I thought dating for a couple years before deciding to take the plunge was very sensible of Soos and Melody. But in the romantic, excitable mind of 14-year-old Mabel, the announcement of their engagement last month was _long_ overdue. “Have they set a date yet?” I asked. Last I’d heard, _next summer_ was as specific as they’d gotten.

Nicky made a face. “Why is everyone so into _clothes_?”

Horace shrugged, but everyone else ignored the comment. “June,” Mabel answered me instead. “Melody really liked May but I think I talked her out of it. We still have school in May and we _have_ to be there for it!”

“Jeez, Mabel, you choose her dress for her, too?” Dipper teased.

She responded by sticking her tongue out at him. “Excuse me for thinking it’s romantic! We were there on their first _date_ , Dipper! And now they’re getting _married_. Do you think they’ll have a baby?”

I winced internally, mentally sidling away from that topic. But Dipper changed it back to one I liked even less.

“As long as it’s not _Time_ Baby. You know, Teagan, it’s a really good thing Grunkle Ford lied to you like that. If you’d actually created a paradox, you’d have been in a ton of trouble.”

“You think they’d have sent the Paradox Avoidance Squad?” Mabel asked with interest, sitting up.

Her brother shrugged mysteriously. “Maybe! Last thing we need is Lolph and Dundgren popping in and trying to arrest our family.”

“Then why the heck do you keep trying to find that time tape?” I demanded irritably after nearly cutting my finger instead of the onion.

“Science!” Dipper reminded me, which was no answer at all.

Time for a new subject. The idea of some sort of time police turning up to arrest me was going to keep me up at night. “Where’s Dave at?” He’d been sprawled on the sofa watching tv when I first got home, but I hadn’t seen him since.

Four sets of shrugs. “Upstairs?” Dipper volunteered unhelpfully.

Well, at least that meant he hadn’t gone out without telling me. He was probably making the most of having no one else in his bedroom. I knew he hated having to share with Dipper this summer, but it didn’t feel right forcing an almost fifteen-year-old girl into the same room as her brother. Mabel and Dipper were close, but there were limits. And putting him in with Nicky and Horace hadn’t sounded much better; the fact that we’d found an affordable house with four bedrooms had been miraculous, but they weren’t exactly _big_ bedrooms.

I stopped asking questions and just listened as the kids talked amongst themselves. It meant I didn’t accidentally slice any fingers off, and they were happy enough to continue the conversation without me. Most of the talk seemed to center on plans for the remainder of the week. Happy, normal, boring teenager stuff.

Nice to know we were hosting Nicky’s gaming group on Saturday. I wasn’t going to complain about him not asking permission, though, because it meant Dipper and Horace were going to be included. I would happily host a tableful of middle schoolers rolling dice and eating all my snack food if it made Horace forget he couldn’t leave the house.

I’m not quite sure when I started actually thinking of Horace as my son. Some woman I’d never met brought him into the world long before I was even born. When we’d first moved into our house he’d been a novelty—sometimes cute, sometimes annoying, likable but not one of _us_. But the more time went by, the more he became a genuine part of the family, and the more maternal I felt toward him. He might not be able to age or leave the house, but he was most _definitely_ one of us. He was my baby.

I wonder how he’d take it if a real baby came onto the scene. Dave would be okay with it…at least, I thought he would. He still needed me emotionally from time to time, and it was certainly going to be a few more years before he finished high school or wanted to live on his own. But another child wouldn’t really be stealing anything from him at this point in his life. Nicky wouldn’t be thrilled about the intrusion, but I also knew he’d be able to cope. Dipper and Mabel were only here a few months out of the year, so their reaction shouldn’t matter—but if they decided they didn’t want to spend summers here anymore, Stan would be devastated.

Then again, I couldn’t imagine the twins _complaining_ about a new addition. Mabel would probably be in ecstasies of delight. And I was putting the horse _way_ before the cart here, because I was anxious and exhausted. I hadn’t even made a doctor’s appointment. Stan might change his mind. My body might say nope, no thank you, not doing this again thankyouverymuch. It was silly to start worrying about all these details this early on. Like how enormous I was going to be at Soos and Melody’s wedding—or wait, if they waited till June, I might _not_ be huge by then, and Teagan why are you doing this to yourself, stop it right now.

My mind drifted back to Ford as I scooped all the chopped vegetables into a hot pan. I was sure he knew what he was talking about, and it _was_ a good thing he hadn’t told us. I’d much rather be lied to by him than by Stan. But it still stung. And his aloof way of warning us what a disaster it all could have been hadn’t made that pill any easier to swallow. Pro tips from the guy who almost ended the world with his hubris. _Thanks_.

I sighed internally and measured out a few spices. The annoying thing was that Ford was just kind of _like_ that. He couldn’t help it. I wondered how long Stan would spend being angry with him over it.

Mabel had stolen Dipper’s phone, and was laughing over how boring all the photos on it were. Horace had left the table and started floating a foot off the ground so that he could look over her shoulder. Nicky was animatedly defending Dipper’s picture selection of muddy footprints and moss.

I hoped Ford got that package in the mail ASAP. The sooner Stan got his missing memories back, the sooner we could move on to the next step. Whatever _that_ looked like.


	2. Chapter 2

I’d been expecting a priority envelope in the mail, but the thing that actually arrived on our doorstep Friday night was about twice that size. I was curious, but set it aside until Stan got home before opening it. And then by the time he _did_ get home, I was completely distracted by household drama. Dave and the other members of his band had just gone through their latest break-up, and he was taking his bad mood out on everybody. Funny how he could date the same _guy_ for over a year with only a minor quarrel here and there, but he’d walked out on his _band_ about six times in the same year. Usually it was due to musical differences and bickering. Sometimes it was personal. They always wound up back together—not that they performed anywhere besides the occasional local bar and the big summer party at the Shack.

This latest fight, Dave told me through sporadic tears and shouting, had been about age. The rest of the band had just finished their junior and senior years of high school, but he still had another two years to go. Their drummer was leaving for college next month, and they’d been trying to decide what to do. The band’s founder and lead guitarist, Robbie, was kind of an ass. Based on what Dave told me, he was secretly seething about the fact that _he_ was going to spend the next year working at Yumberjacks and taking courses at the local community college—so he was taking his anger out on the youngest member of the group.

So in a flare of dramatics, Dave had quit the band and come home to cry on the phone to Thompson about the injustice. When Dipper had tried to go in to grab a book, he’d gotten shouted at for being “nosy.” Given Dipper wasn’t having the best week either, this had been the final straw, and he’d shouted right back at Dave. Horace, who hated fighting and shouting, had gone silent and non-corporeal in response, which infuriated Nicky because they’d been in the middle of a two-player video game marathon.

Mabel was out, spending the night with her friends Candy and Grenda. Anyone who says girls have a monopoly on emotional drama has clearly never met my family.

So when I carried the package through the door after work, ready to relax for an hour or so before starting on dinner, I had to play referee instead. Stan, who had been in a bad mood ever since talking to Ford, took one look at all the sulking, tearful, angry boys and noped right out when he got home. I knew this was probably better, because if he was already grouchy the chances of him saying anything helpful were very low, and the chances of him making it worse were very high. I knew that he had a _right_ to be cranky after the week he’d been having. But I wasn’t delighted about getting left to deal with everyone else’s problems on my own while he relaxed in front of the tv in our bedroom.

By the time I got everyone calmed down and not hating each other, it was past six and I needed to start throwing ingredients into the casserole dish. I played some music on my phone while I was doing it, hoping to improve my own mood a little bit. It worked enough that I didn’t snap at anybody until almost bedtime, but it also drove the package completely out of my head.

I let Nicky lead the conversation at dinner, telling us animatedly about his plans for tomorrow. His two best friends would be there, as well as a few people he only hung out with when gaming. They were starting a new campaign, and Horace had been working on his character sheet for days. Dipper seemed to share their excitement, but I could see Dave texting under the table between bites. I asked him whether he was talking to Mabel, and reminded him that if he got an invite from the girls he could drive my car over there and join them.

That brightened his mood substantially. “Seriously? I can have the _car_?”

I eyed him warily. “If you’re going to Grenda’s house and nowhere else, then yes.”

He flicked his long hair away from his face and rolled his eyes. “I’m a safe driver!”

“Which is why I’m letting you take my car to Grenda’s house,” I replied calmly.

“But I—”

“Listen to your mom,” Stan told him sharply, looking up from his plate. “It’s a better offer than you’d get outta _me_.” He turned his gaze toward me instead, and gave me a shadow of a smile. “Bet you’re not even charging him for gas.”

I was still a little miffed at him for the disappearing act earlier, but I smiled back anyhow. “Nope.” I returned my attention to Dave. “Honestly, I’m surprised you’re not already _there_.”

“Because,” he retorted, looking stormy again, “I was going to be at Robbie’s till seven. Remember?”

I started mentally kicking myself for bringing that up. “Yeah, sorry.”

It was Nicky’s turn to roll his eyes. “Stop acting like this is some big deal. We all know you’re gonna be back to making crappy music in a week.”

“You don’t know anything about it!” Dave shot back angrily. Shit, here we went again.

“So Nick,” I said loudly, hoping to diffuse the situation, “what kind of snacks do you need for tomorrow? Dipper, any requests?”

“ _I_ have a request,” Dave muttered mutinously.

“Cheese Boodles!” Dipper said quickly, speaking over him.

Nicky nodded vehemently. “You can make marshmallow treats, right? And cupcakes? And pizza bites?”

I sighed elaborately, which didn’t quite cover the fact that I was smiling. “I think I can manage that.” It meant I’d have to run back to the store after dinner if I didn’t want to cut into my time tomorrow too much—but escaping to the calm sanity of the grocery store didn’t sound too bad. Heck, maybe I could even drop Dave off while I was doing it.

I was making a mental list in my head when Horace, who’d been quiet most of the meal, jumped up from the table and shrieked in excitement. “Mom! Mom! Guys! I just _had a bite_!”

I nearly dropped my fork. “Seriously?”

He nodded vigorously, looking positively flushed with pride. “I _tasted_ it and everything!”

All of our eyes went to his plate. Horace was fairly good at taking on physical form when he wanted to—but it took energy, and it took concentration, and it had never before extended to anything as complicated as food.

“Mabel’s going to be so mad she missed it!” Dipper exclaimed, producing his phone from apparently nowhere. “I’ve got to text Grunkle Ford. I wonder if he’s ever heard about a ghost being able to—er…” He remembered too late that Stan was still holding a grudge, and tried to abort the reference to Ford. “I’ll be right back,” he muttered, fleeing the room.

“Don’t think I didn’t hear that!” Stan called after him, but he was smiling at Horace. “I can’t believe you did it, kid. How long you been working on that?”

Nicky was already on his feet, grinning as he pulled his little brother into a hug. “That is so cool! I knew you could do it.”

Dave forgot that he was supposed to be a moody teen and offered Horace a fist-bump. “What’d it taste like?”

Horace’s brow wrinkled. “Kind of…stinky. I don’t think I like broccoli.” Suddenly he was avoiding my gaze. “The cheese was good, though!”

Oh good grief, did he think I was going to be _mad_? I left my seat and pulled him into a hug as soon as Nicky had gone back to eating. “That’s incredible. Are you going to have another bite?” He had to think about it. I laughed and gave him one more half-hug before reclaiming my seat. “You can leave the broccoli if you want.”

He sat back down, a look of supreme focus on his face, scooped up a forkful of rice and chicken and cheese, and put it into his mouth. We watched him chew and swallow, then burst into applause as if this were some sort of amazing magic trick. Blushing profusely, Horace stood back up to take a bow. “Tomorrow,” he announced as he rose, “I’m going to try a Cheese Boodle.”

*

The house was, as usual, full of teenagers. Our dining room table was covered in charts, miniatures, dice, and food. Three of our boys, plus Nicky’s friends, were laughing as they started up their game. Dave was hiding in his room on the third floor, reveling in having it to himself for the day. Mabel, having spent the morning helping me bake, was swimming at the pool with her friends. Waddles was lying in the grass in the backyard, not far from my feet. Stan and I were on the porch swing, enjoying the shade as we went methodically through the contents of the box.

The pack of photos came out first, and that seemed like as good a place to start as any. They had that faded, faintly blurry quality that all snapshots from the pre-digital age seemed to have. We were spending a long time looking at each one. The first pictures on the roll had been in the living room of the Mystery Shack. Stan was still staring at the third one, shaking his head to himself. “I’d forgotten it used to look like that,” he told me, sounding a little surprised. “Before I added the table and changed out that tank…ha, look how little the tv is! The one in our _room_ is twice that size now!”

I nodded and smiled encouragingly. “We watched movies on it every night, though. Snuggled up in that chair staring at that little screen.”

Stan’s finger tapped the photo thoughtfully. “That’s not right, is it? I don’t remember you in the chair. You…” He shook his head again. “This stinks! It’s like trying to remember a damn dream!”

“I know,” I assured him soothingly. “Don’t push yourself too hard. And you’re right, I didn’t always sit in the chair.” I hesitated. “Do you remember where I sat, the first few nights?”

His finger tapped the photo more insistently, but after a minute of trying he shook his head and moved on to the next photo. This one had been taken in the kitchen, instead. I remembered taking it, thinking about how handsome the morning winter sunlight made him look, and how he’d absolutely refused to pose properly for it.

Sitting next to me, staring down at the picture, Stan blinked, adjusted his glasses, and leaned forward to get a closer look. The photo was of a good-looking guy just past his prime, shaggy brown hair and dark unshaven jaw, maroon fez tipped down over his forehead, eyes defiantly shut, bare feet propped up on the kitchen table and arms folded over his chest. He was wearing a white dress shirt, only partially buttoned, and a pair of boxer shorts.

Again, Stan’s finger tapped the photograph as the gears moved in his head. He shut his eyes for a minute, the finger stilled, and I watched in suspense until he opened them again. “That shirt…that’s the first time I wore that shirt.” He pulled his gaze from the picture to look at me, uncertainty flashing across his face. “Isn’t it?”

My breath caught in excitement, jolting out in little bursts. “Yes,” I told him. “It was in one of Ford’s trunks. I said maybe looking more respectable would be good for business.”

Stan’s brow furrowed again as he chased the memory. “It was too tight.”

I bumped my shoulder lightly into his. “Broad shoulders and muscles. Of course it was tight.”

His index finger started tapping again, and the rest of them joined in. As I watched him drum on his knee, inspiration struck. I slouched down in the swing, digging around the pockets of my capris, until my fingers closed on a couple coins that had survived the wash. A nickel and a few pennies, no quarters—but close enough. I balanced the nickel shakily on the back of my last knuckle and carefully, stubbornly, I shuffled it across the backs of my remaining fingers.

Halfway through the second time I did it, Stan stopped drumming his fingers and started staring at me. I met his eyes, smiled, and flipped the coin to him. He caught it neatly, stuck it on the back of his fingers, and made it walk across them easily. “You were way too impressed,” he told me. Suddenly, his eyes cleared, and he laughed aloud. “You were so impressed! Teegs!” He flipped the coin outward, where it landed in front of Waddles, and turned to seize both my arms. “I remember you!” He laughed again. “I remember you sitting in my kitchen trying to do that stupid trick! And then I…I tried to do a different one. And I blew it. So you started talking about the shirt instead.”

I nodded, my head bobbing rapidly. He shuffled the pictures backward, returning to the one from the living room, and jabbed his finger at the dinosaur skull next to the chair. “There! _That_ was your spot. Till you decided to try and steal my seat.”

“Right, like you objected _so_ hard,” I teased him around my almost painfully wide grin.

“I objected to you _taking_ it. You wanted to _share_ , you coulda just told me. But no, you had to play hard to get.”

“I didn’t want to—”

“To screw up the timeline, I _know_ , you only said it every ten minutes. Jeez.” He rolled his eyes skyward, caught up in the memory. “You cared so much about your stupid _timeline_ , I thought you’d never—” His eyes got wide again. “We did it in the kitchen, didn’t we. And the gift shop.”

“And the bedroom,” I agreed. “And the showroom. And the living room. Are you telling me you remember all that?”

Stan shook his head like he was trying to clear it. “Bits and pieces, that’s all.” He went back to studying the photos as if they contained the answer to life, the universe, and everything. “But it’s a start.”

“Memories _always_ come in bits and pieces,” I reminded him, folding my legs up under me and leaning against his side. “It was twenty-five years ago, you’re not going to remember it like it’s yesterday.”

“Quit being a buzzkill,” he scolded me without looking up. “Told you, I’m gonna remember every damn minute.”

Privately, I thought that extremely unlikely. Aloud I said “Just don’t expect them to come in order!”

Going through the rest of the pictures unearthed a few more little tidbits, but nothing else huge. When I told him some of the movies we’d watched together, he could recall ribbing me about finding the old guys in one film sexy (I hadn’t, but he’d certainly joked about it). With a little coaxing he also remembered that we ate almost exclusively peanut butter sandwiches for several days. I was pretty sure I’d mentioned that to him before, so it was hard to know if it was a genuine memory, but he _seemed_ genuine when he started talking about it.

Eventually we pulled the next item out of the box. Underpants. I clapped my hand to my mouth the second I realized what Stan was holding, and then I couldn’t help it—I started to laugh. “You _saved_ my _panties_?” I demanded, breathless from giggles. “Are you kidding me? Ew, Stan!”

“Well _you_ weren’t using ‘em,” he retorted, using both hands to stretch them out and examine them. Bright red cotton bikinis, not a color I’d ever have chosen for myself—but I remembered wearing them, and I _definitely_ remembered taking them off. “You left ‘em here, what else was I supposed to do with them?”

“Throw them out, I guess?” I shrugged, not really having a good answer to that one. “I mean, it’s sweet. I think. I just…” I started giggling again. “Are _those_ triggering any memories?”

A familiar light came into his eyes, the kind that always set off tiny bolts of anticipation down my spine. “I remember grabbing them from the drug store,” he told me with a slight, teasing smile. “There was a lady there who kept looking at me like she barely needed an excuse to call the cops. I tried looking at a bunch of other stuff to throw her off, but the old bag was _following_ me! In the end I just shoved ‘em in my pocket and made for the exit before she could squawk.”

That was _excellent_ , because now that he mentioned it I remembered him getting home and telling me a similar story before giving me my first pair of clean underwear in days. But I had a feeling he was holding out on me. The look in his eyes didn’t come from remembering a cranky old lady at the drugstore. “Anything else?”

“Yeah.” He hooked his arm around my waist, tugging me back over his thighs until I was lying on my back with my head in his lap. He held the panties out a little way from my face, passing them from one finger to the next deftly. “These are the ones you wore that first night.”

That couldn’t be right. The first night, when I’d been a hypothermic mess and he had to help me peel off my wet clothes as I waded in and out of consciousness, I’d been wearing my panties from 2014.

He must have seen the confusion on my face, because he shook his head slightly. “Not the first night. The _first_ night. When you just invited yourself right into my bed.”

Oh. Yes. _That_ night. Not my first night in 1989, but the first of many spent curled up against his side in his old twin bed. I’d still been wearing clothes _over_ my underpants when I crawled under the covers, though. And everything had come off pretty quickly once we got started. “You remember what _underwear_ I was wearing?”

“Hey, it’s not every day you see a hot glowing babe peel her panties off in front of you. Not the kinda thing you wanna forget.”

My mouth quirked up into an embarrassed grin. “I never thought about it like that.”

He really _was_ remembering that night. I could tell from his body language alone. Well…they _were_ some pretty pleasant memories. I let my hand move up over his chest to play with the gold chain he always wore. It hadn’t been there in 1989, I realized with a jolt. I wondered when he started wearing it.

“I love you,” I murmured dreamily, feeling incredibly happy in that moment. The air was warm, I could hear kids laughing and faint sounds of music, and I was just really happy to be here, in 2014, with the man I loved.

“That’s what you said then, too,” he reminded me, raising an eyebrow mischievously.

I beamed up at him. “I can’t believe you’re remembering this much!”

He nodded. “It’s coming back quick now. But you know, maybe I oughtta see you in those. Just those. Might bring back some more.”

“Hey.” I squirmed upward so that our faces were level with each other. “If it helps you, I guess I can make that great personal sacrifice.”

“Think you’re cute, don’t you, crazy lady,” he growled low in his throat.

“Damn it, kids,” I muttered in response. “Why can’t they just…go somewhere else for five minutes?”

“Eh, they’re into their thing.” Stan smiled slyly. “But that doesn’t mean _we_ can’t.”

I sat up quickly. We hadn’t had sex since my return to the present, almost a full week ago. I had missed the connection, but given he’d been tired and then frustrated and then scared and angry; I’d wanted to give him the space he needed. But unless I was very much mistaken, he was suggesting correcting that. Sooner rather than later. Soon, please. Soon was suddenly not soon enough. “You wanna go for a ride?”

“Might be nice.” He stretched lazily backward in the swing, as if he didn’t care one way or another. I wasn’t buying the act.

“Let me just tell Dave,” I said, getting hurriedly to my feet.

Stan snorted. “You sure he wants to hear about it?”

I smothered a laugh of my own. “I’ll tell him we’re running an _errand_ or something. Just so he knows he’s in charge.”

“He’s not stupid,” Stan called after me. “Pretty sure he knows what kinda _errands_ only take fifteen minutes.”

“Yes, but he’s also great at willful denial,” I told him as I went through the back door.

To get to Dave, I had to walk through the DD&MD game. Most of the marshmallow treats were already gone. Nicky’s friend Amy was arguing with Dipper about whether or not she could roll to seduce a troll. “But why would you _want_ to?” Dipper asked plaintively. “You just defeated him!”

“For fun, _duh_. Now what do I have to roll to pull it off?”

I stopped to watch. Horace waved to me and held up a half-eaten cheese boodle, pointing at it victoriously with a finger from his other hand. I gave him a double thumbs-up.

Dipper let out a long sigh. “Eight or higher. He’s not exactly a challenge.”

Amy took a large bite of a cupcake and rolled her neon purple die. The five boys at the table watched with interest. “Crap! A _six_? Come _on_.”

Mark laughed. Nicky cheered. Cody clapped her sympathetically on the back. Dipper looked relieved. “Guess you’re not his type, Malfinda. Sorry.”

Amy shrugged and shoved the rest of the cupcake into her mouth. “His loss.”

“He grabs you by the throat and tries to kill you again.”

Mark laughed again. “I’ll rescue the lady.”

Dipper glanced at his chart. “You’ll only need to roll a five. He’s weak from the battle.”

“Then I’ll kill him myself!” Amy declared.

“It’s not your turn, though.”

As entertaining as this was, it wasn’t enough to keep me away from Stan any longer. I leaned over the back of Horace’s chair, between him and Nicky. “Stan and I are running out for a few. I’ll have my phone, but Dave’s in charge till we get back.”

“Wait!” Nicky protested immediately, grabbing my wrist as I turned to go upstairs. “Don’t tell him!”

Horace nodded vigorously in agreement. “He’ll power trip!”

“And he’s still all _moody_ ,” Nicky added with a grimace of disgust. “If you interrupt him he might come down here and start being a dick again.”

I ran a hand over my face. “Would a little sympathy really kill you? You’d be upset if _this_ group broke up, right?”

Mark overheard. “That’s never happening!”

I was not getting dragged into this right now. “Fine, I won’t bother him. But if anything happens in the fifteen minutes I’m gone, you _will_ listen to him. Got it?”

That must have been good enough, because they both dismissed me and went back to their game. Mark’s character slayed the injured troll. I stuck my head back out the door into the yard. “Wanna blow this joint?”

Despite having never gotten properly dressed today (he was still in his favorite outfit of an undershirt and boxers), Stan pushed himself up out of the swing immediately. “You bet.”

We cut back through the house to grab car keys and something to put on our feet. “I like that kid,” Stan told me, jerking his head toward the gaming table as Amy’s character attempted to charm an arms dealer into letting them have a valuable weapon for free. “She’s got spunk.”

I opened the front door. “And it doesn’t hurt that she tells Gideon to get bent every time she sees him, right?”

He laughed. “How come she doesn’t hang out with Mabel instead of these nerds?”

“Because she’d rather pretend to be an elven bard than listen to boy bands and read _True Vampire Blood_.” I opened the passenger seat door and slid over the scalding hot leather seats. “Horace ate a cheese boodle.”

“Watch out.” He shut his door behind him and stuck the key in the ignition. “He keeps up like this, we’re gonna be feeding _five_ teenagers all summer.”

“Don’t be silly. Summer’s more than half over.” Disregarding safety and legal requirements, I scooted over next to him instead of fastening my seatbelt. He dropped the pair of red panties into my lap. I hadn’t even noticed him carrying them out of the house! “Where are we going?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not as long as it’s private.”

“Private?” he mused as he put the car into gear. “You want private on a Saturday afternoon around here, it’s gonna take more than fifteen minutes, sweetheart.”

I groaned. “We should have just snuck up to the bedroom.”

“What’re you talking about? This is way more fun.” He reversed out of the drive, nearly taking out the mailbox as we headed south down Turner Street. “Got an idea already.” The car swerved slightly as he looked over at me. “What are you waiting for? Thought you said you were gonna put those on.”

I was already not wearing a seatbelt, why not. Aside from the kids playing outside a few houses down the street, of course. I slid down the back of the seat until I’d almost disappeared from view before I wiggled out of my capris. It felt very scandalous—but, as Stan said, that was also what made it exciting. I peeled off my regular panties before quickly sticking my feet through the red ones from the 80s. “Do I bother putting my pants back on?” I asked, lifting my eyebrows as he pulled the car up alongside a long wooden fence. I hadn’t been paying attention to where we were going, given I was trying to quickly change clothes, but now… “Are we at the _dump_?”

Stan looked at me defiantly. “You got someplace better?”

I tipped my head sideways, acknowledging that. “Touché.”

“It’s pronounced _touch_ , sweetie. And don’t worry—I’m gonna.”

I laughed and looked both ways down the street. “Someone could very easily walk down that sidewalk.” I gestured to the other side of the street. No one was around right now, but I didn’t want that to change right when I started enjoying myself.

“You think I don’t know that? Hold on.” Now that we’d established no one was currently around, he jumped the curb and pulled the El Diablo up alongside the fence not along the road, but around the corner where there was nothing but trees. With no indication of concern at all, he directed the old car right between the fence and the boughs of a few giant pine trees. It would still be visible from the road, but someone would have to go out of their way to get a look inside.

I gave him a look of appreciation. “Not bad, honey. Not bad at all.”

He grinned at me and turned off the engine. “Now to answer your question, no. Keep your pants off.”

Was it just me, or was it suddenly very hot in here? Oh, no, wait, it _was_ hot in there. I was in a car with no air conditioning in the first week of August. But that had nothing to do with the heat spreading rapidly through me right now. I lay back on the seat, stretching out on the leather and placing my legs in Stan’s lap. “So, not that I care at this point, but _does_ seeing me in these ring any bells?

“Lots of ‘em,” he said, but didn’t bother to give any further detail. Instead, he moved his hand up my thigh and over the front of that thin red cotton. My breath caught, and I squirmed with excitement. I’d been waiting for a moment like this all week. This was simple, physical, uncomplicated. It felt like _us_. Doing it in the car, under the spread of a large pine tree, seemed especially poetic.

He ran his fingers just under the elastic at the top of the fabric. I ran out of patience and grabbed his shoulders, pulling him down on top of me so that I could reach his lips. We didn’t need a lot of foreplay, didn’t need a lot of time. Time ceased to have any sort of meaning when he twitched the crotch of the panties out of the way and pushed into me. My grip on his shoulders tightened as my hips rose up to meet him. Time might as well have stopped. He paused to set his glasses on the dash. My hands moved to his face when he came back, another anchor holding us together as I kissed him for all I was worth.

Everything faded away except for the strong waves of emotion and stronger waves of desire. Transcendental, that’s what it was. Stan would tease me for thinking of such a big word during such a passionate moment, but that’s what it _was_. Transcendental.

I barely kept enough wherewithal to stay quiet and out of view, particularly when the sense of impending climax washed over me. My hands were in his hair by then, looking for anything to hold onto, and my mouth was pressed against his neck. The world exploded around me, and then put itself back together piece by piece.

Part of me would have liked to stay like that, connected, for as long as possible. Unfortunately, given we were outside a junkyard in broad daylight, _as long as possible_ translated to _get your clothes back on before someone gets nosy_. Not that I had too many clothes to get back on; most of them hadn’t come fully off in the first place.

“Thanks,” I smiled as I shoved my legs back into my capris. “I _needed_ that.”

He let out a deep sigh of relief and adjusted his boxers as he sat up. “Me too.”

I felt my smile turn slightly bitter. “I’m sorry this week has been a train wreck.”

“Eh,” Stan slipped an arm around my shoulder. “So what if my girl’s trouble? She loves me like crazy, that’s gotta count for something, right?”

“I sure hope so,” I answered with feeling before subsiding into silence. “How are you doing with…everything?”

He surveyed me for a minute before answering. “I dunno, Teegs. Whole thing feels unreal.”

“I know.” I wrapped my arm around his chest. “You still pissed at Ford?”

“Hell yeah, aren’t you? He had no business keeping that from us!”

I waggled a hand to show indifference. “I guess I’m not too pissed anymore. Not now that you’re remembering.” A smile touched my lips, and I wiggled closer. “We should go out to the Shack tomorrow and go through the rest of the package together.”

“Could go right now,” he offered.

I shook my head. “Much as I’d like to, I told them we’d be back in fifteen minutes. It’s been, what, twenty?”

“I wasn’t watching the clock,” he admitted, which made my smile wider.

“Yeah, me neither. But I don’t want to leave them hanging.”

“Send ‘em a text.”

“It’s other people’s kids, too. We can’t just disappear on them.”

“Watch me!”

I scolded him with my eyes, and his shoulders slumped forward. “Yeah, yeah, okay. Tomorrow.”

I hated seeing him disappointed. “Tell you what. How about we go out tonight, after the extra kids are gone. They’ll be fine if we have a date for a few hours.” I turned and kissed his shoulder. “Just you and me. Whaddya say?”

I smirk danced around the edges of his lips. “I don’t have to dress up, do I?”

I made a face. “Of _course_ not! Wear something comfortable. Besides,” I added as an idea came to me, “if we wait till tonight, that’ll give me a chance to talk to Soos about reserving his parlor for the evening. And I can wash these underpants.”

He leered at me, making me blush with pleasure. “You need a red bra to go with it.”

“I didn’t have a red bra in 1989,” I reminded him.

“I know,” he answered. “No reason we can’t make some _new_ memories.”

A slow grin spread over my face. “I like the way you think.”

“Course you do.” He beamed.

“Okay,” I told him, hearing the happiness in my own voice. “Get us home, and I’ll stick you with the kids while I run out to the mall for some last-minute shopping.”

“You’re sticking me with the kids?”

“What, you’re gonna buy my bra?”

“Buy? No.”

I laughed delightedly. “You know what? Sure. I make no promises about how it’ll look or how long I keep it on—but if you want to bring me something, I’ll wear it.”

“You got yourself a deal,” he promised, and put the car back into gear.


	3. Chapter 3

“Boy, it was really good luck that they were already planning to go out tonight, wasn’t it?”

We were at the Mystery Shack, but in no hurry to go inside. Despite telling Stan there was no need to dress up, I was wearing a sundress over a surprisingly supportive velvet chemise. Everything kind of…chafed, but in a very pleasant way. He’d put on real pants for the occasion, along with a barely-buttoned Hawaiian shirt.

“That’s not lucky,” Stan scoffed, stretching his arms along the back of the seat. “I coulda just _told_ Soos to get lost for a while.”

I snorted. “Yes, but this way we can do it _without_ you looking like a jerk.”

“ _Jerk_?” He repeated, scoffing. “He’d be _happy_ to do it to help me out!”

That was probably true, but Soos _did_ officially own the Shack these days. And he was getting married next year. He wasn’t going to dedicate himself to Stan’s whims forever. I felt like saying that right now might be a bit of a buzzkill, however. “Yes,” I agreed instead, “but convincing Abuelita to go out as well would have been harder. Good thing it’s her Bingo night, right?”

“Bingo,” he said, shaking his head as if he felt sorry for her. “For people who can’t handle _real_ gambling.”

That made me grin. “So are you going to tell me about your exploits at the mall this afternoon?” I knew he still shoplifted occasionally. I was fine with that. I didn’t even mind helping him out, once in a while. I did, however, try to avoid discussing it in front of my children. He’d already taught Nicky how to fight—the last thing I needed was from them to start emulating his other skills.

“Nothing to tell,” he bragged ever so slightly. “They make it too easy with those shoplifting scanners. You just wait till the sales lady’s helping someone else, then hold it way up in your hand as you walk through. The only _hard_ part was finding the right thing to take.” He let his eyes move over my body, putting all sorts of ideas into my head. “Looks like it fits alright, though.”

“Yeah, who would have thought you’d know my body so well.” I winked at him. “Seriously though, I’m almost spooked by how perfectly it fits. Good call.”

He turned in the seat, putting his hands on either side of my waist experimentally. “You gonna be able to dance in it?”

I put one leg over his, wiggling between him and the steering wheel until I was sitting in his lap, facing him. It was not remotely ladylike. I wrapped my arms around his neck. “As well as I ever can.” I pressed my mouth against his, because kissing beat worrying about my dancing abilities. I’d never had much faith in them. On the other hand, he’d been pretty successful at teaching me a few moves from the 50s or 60s that I didn’t stink out loud at. On the _other_ hand, I’d also been mildly inebriated most of the times we’d attempted them, and that wasn’t the case tonight. On the other-other hand, my sprained ankle was doing markedly better than it had been the last few times.

I was overanalyzing. I needed to just relax and have fun.

Not think about how ridiculous this cute velvet chamise would look on me in another six months or so.

Sometimes, I really am my own worst enemy.

“Want to go do this inside?” I asked, breaking off the kiss. “Before I wind up needing to wash these panties again?”

“You’re the one who can’t keep her hands off me, sweetie.”

“You made me wait all week,” I whined, dragging myself off of him.

He grinned almost sheepishly. “Grab the box outta the back, wouldja?”

I leaned way over the back of the front seat to reach the memory box, hopefully giving him a nice view in the process. I was more than willing to push my hormones aside in the name of reclaiming history—but how often did he actually see me in a dress? Had to make the most of that.

I dropped back onto my butt in the seat next to him. “Taking it inside?”

“ _You_ are,” he growled, confirming that he had indeed enjoyed the view. “But nah, I’d rather keep ‘em safe in here.”

That felt right. This car had always been one of _our_ places, even more than our bedroom or the Shack. I didn’t know the exact moment last year that I’d gone from really liking him to falling in love, but there was a pretty good chance it had happened sitting right on these old leather seats. I nestled against his side and held out the open package to him.

He reached in and produced a small manila envelope. There was a post-it note stuck to the outside. In Ford’s neat, precise cursive, it read _You’re right. I should have explained it to you last weekend, but I didn’t think it was my place to do so. Hope this helps, and please accept my apology._

“Apology?” Stan snorted derisively. “ _What_ apology?” But he set the note carefully to the side, and there wasn’t much real anger in his face as he opened the envelope itself. After peering inside he upended its contents into my lap, letting me catch them all in the skirt of my dress. They were half-pages, folded up into tight little rectangles, just as I’d left them a quarter century ago—but the paper had thinned and yellowed ever so slightly in that time. I dug through the pile until I find the one labeled _1990_. I unfolded it carefully before passing it to him.

He put his arm around my shoulder and read through the sparse sentences silently. As he was doing that, I found and opened the next one. He accepted it, but stopped and looked over at me as I was unfolding 1992. “Shout and Twist,” he said, his voice a little hoarse. “You were good at that one.”

My grin was embarrassed. “If you say so.” I held up my phone, though. “I’ve got it on here. Think you can still keep up?” The unimpressed glare he gave at that made me quickly try to smother a giggle.

If he was tempted to go in and prove that he _could_ still keep up, he was exhibiting excellent self-restraint. He held out his hand for the next note, and I gave it to him. We went through three more before he paused again. 1995. He stared at it for a long time. “Stan?” I asked softly after the seconds started to drag on.

“I remember reading this one,” he muttered, his eyes still locked on the page. “Dunno why. But I remember sitting in my chair—it was December. Right after Christmas. I’d been beating my head on the wall down there for weeks and weeks again. Couldn’t see _how_ I was ever gonna make any progress. I’d…I threw something down there. Had to try and fix it. Felt like shit.” He went silent again. I could imagine how awful he’d felt that night. “I was drunk. I was _mad_. Couldn’t stop thinking what a screw-up I was.” He sighed, and his arm tightened around me. “I’d always waited till January for these things, but I figured, what the hell, what difference is a week. So I opened it.”

I looked over his shoulder at the note in his hands. It was sweet and heartfelt, but there was nothing particularly special about it. I’d written twenty-two of them, and it had been hard to profess my love that many times without getting repetitive. I tipped my face up and kissed him on his scruffy cheek. “That’s exactly why I wrote them. So you could feel a little less alone at times like that.”

Stan shuffled back through the first five notes, scanning them again, nodding to himself. “You wanted to stay.”

It wasn’t really a question, which was good because I didn’t have any sort of answer I could articulate. “Not at the cost of being with you now. It would have meant losing all this. And never seeing the boys again.” I let out a shaky breath. “I’m actually glad I’ve got a genetic reliance on fireflies. It meant I didn’t really have a choice. If I’d had one…” I shook my head, staring into the distance at things I couldn’t quite see. “It would have been even tougher than it was.”

I looked back at Stan, and saw he had that same thousand-yard stare. “Yep. It’s a good thing you ate that bug. Cause I think you _would’ve_ stayed. And Ford’s right, those time police bastards would never’ve let that slide. Who knows how much we woulda screwed up.”

I closed my eyes and rested my forehead on his shoulder. “You’re taking this better than I expected.”

His shoulder shook under me with an unarticulated laugh. “It’s not so hard when I _remember_ some of it. Lemme have the next one.”

We made it through the rest of the notes. When the last one was on the stack, he turned and smiled at me. “You’re a pain in the ass,” he said, catching me totally off guard. “You’re always swallowing bugs and cutting yourself and stealing my stuff and getting kidnapped and getting drunk and dragging me into caring about people. All that crap. Spraining your ankle and almost burning up and adopting ghosts and forgetting your birth control.”

He was smiling, though, and I repeated his words from earlier that day. “But I love you like crazy. That’s gotta count for something, right?”

He cupped my cheek in his hand, smoothing a loose strand of hair out of the way with his thumb. “Counts for a lot.” Just as he was about to kiss me, a fresh smile snuck onto his face and he laughed softly instead. “Makes it better, actually! If you _weren’t_ a magnet for trouble, you’d’ve been way too good for me.”

“Oh, come on,” I protested, stroking his chest just above the last fastened button on his shirt. “No such thing.”

“And you really believe that.” Smiling, he shook his head. “Crazy lady.” His gaze moved down from my face, over my chest, and came to rest on my abdomen. The smile faded, and I felt anxiety bubble up inside me to replace the sentimentality. “Can I…” I cocked my head to the side, trying to understand, but didn’t raise any objections. Tentatively, he put out his left hand and placed it along my stomach.

It was funny, because I’d just gotten reacclimated to all the signs of age in his face, but the expression sitting on them right now would have fit much better in 1989. He looked scared…awed… _young_. That was the only word that really fit. He looked young.

I put my hand on his, adjusting it down a few inches until it was actually in the appropriate place. I left my hand there, on top of his. “There’s not much going on there right now,” I told him nervously. “Nothing to feel for at least another five months.”

“You, uh…” He had to stop and swallow. “You think it’ll actually…”

“Make it?” I supplied. “I don’t know.” I pressed down a little harder, protectively. “I kinda hope so. What about you?”

He twitched, snatching his hand away. “I’ll be a lousy dad.”

“Bullshit,” I told him calmly, and put his hand right back. He didn’t fight me. “You will be fun, adoring, protective, and probably spoil the shit out of this kid.”

That brought him up short. “I wasn’t thinking about it as a _kid_.”

“They don’t stay tiny very long,” I said wryly. “Before you know it we’ll have this little person with your eyes and hair who takes off his pants at the most inappropriate times and runs off into the woods after a gnome he saw outside the Shack.”

He grinned at the image, some of the uncertainly leaking back out of his face. “You think?”

“Of course!” I glanced down at my mostly flat stomach. “Why do you think I want to meet him?”

“What, like I’m supposed to know how you think? Your idea of a good time is convincing me to hit you.”

“Hey, I like other things too!”

“Sure you do. Old cars, strong coffee, mystery novels. What kinda sense am I supposed to make of that?”

“Who said it had to make _sense_?” I rubbed my face against him, leaving our hands where they were.

We sat in comfortable silence for a moment, listening to crickets chirp outside the car windows, thinking our own thoughts. A couple of fireflies blinked on and off in the distance. “Nine months out,” Stan said at last. “That’s…start of May, right?”

“Probably late April, based on when I should’ve given myself that shot.” I’d actually counted it out the other day. If my math was right, I’d be due in mid-April, about a week before my own birthday.

“Jeez.” He stared down at our hands again.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” he answered slowly. “Just takes some getting used to.”

“Then it’s a good thing we’ve got till April.”

He kept his hand there just a few more seconds, looking bewildered. Then he took it back, stretched, and shuffled himself back over toward the car door. “We going inside?”

“Hell yeah.” I followed him out his door and up through the back entrance of the Shack. A few of the lights were still on, but when I called out a greeting just to be sure, no one responded. I walked slowly into the kitchen. I hadn’t been in the house portion of the place since getting back from the past. Seeing everything so clean and bright was disorienting.

Stan was equally unimpressed. “I always hate coming back here,” he grumped as he walked beside me. “Look what she did to the place!”

 _She_ meant Soos’ abuela, of course. She’d put up her own family photos, brought in her own furniture, and left doilies and bags of knitting at seemingly every turn. It was certainly a lot friendlier and better smelling than it had been in 1989, but I could see his point. I brushed my hand against his and stopped in the kitchen doorway. “It’s _their_ home now,” I reminded him. “All _your_ stuff is back at our place.” I’d even let him put the dinosaur skull table in our living room.

He shook his head theatrically. “I used to have a whole house to myself,” he muttered.

“Yeah, and it was lonely as fuck.” I nudged him playfully and walked through into the kitchen. I headed straight for the coffee maker, even though I didn’t actually need any extra caffeine at the moment. I was hoping that just seeing me standing near the machine would drag some more recollections out of wherever the memory gun had hidden them.

I couldn’t say if it worked, but he did walk right up behind me, pressing up against my back and circling his arms around me. “I was fine till some lady fell through the door and started stealing all my coffee secrets.”

I twisted my head back to look at him, smiling. “Oh, so you remember that.”

“I remember being weirded out by how much you were into that coffee.”

I laughed to myself. “You remember playing poker at that table?”

His brow pulled down as he searched through his memory. “Kinda. Maybe.”

Damn. But then, we’d been drinking that night anyway. Even _my_ memories of it were a little fuzzy. I turned in his arms, lifting mine and wrapping them around his neck. “Take me to the lab?”

“You got legs,” he said, but scooped me up into a bridal carry anyway. He grunted with effort. “If I throw my back out…”

“I’ll give you a nice long backrub and get out your orthopedic pillow when we get home,” I promised, trying not to smile.

We made it to the basement. It was a miracle that elevator still worked, honestly. The Mystery Shack had been smashed and uprooted so many times, the mechanics should have been blown completely to hell. Then again, this was the epicenter of weirdness in Gravity Falls. Which was probably the epicenter of weirdness in our whole dimension. Maybe it _wasn’t_ so strange that it still worked.

The lights came on at the flip of a switch, but the banks of instruments and computers were dark and silent. I trailed my hand along their surfaces as I walked toward the desk at the end of the room, and my fingers came away dusty. When I dropped into the chair there, an entire cloud of dust rose up, making me sneeze.

“Jeez, Soos really let this place go, huh.” Stan surveyed the room.

I opted not to point out that _he_ worked in this building every day, too. “Well, he’d have no reas—”

“Let’s go back up,” he said abruptly, cutting me off.

“The dust isn’t _that_ bad,” I objected. Not that this was my favorite place to be, but we’d just made the trip down.

“It’s not the dust.” He turned back the way we’d come, trusting me to follow him. I did, looking at him curiously. When we were nearly back to the main floor, he noticed my staring. “Didn’t like the stuff that came back down there,” he admitted gruffly, shoving his hands into his pockets. “We had some sorta fight.”

Oh. Yes, I remembered what he was talking about—or at least, I thought I did. We had a few good shouting matches down there before he decided to trust me, but they didn’t have the same emotional punch as the _last_ fight we had down there. If you could call it a fight. He’d really put himself out there, asked me to stay. And I’d had to shoot him down. Ugh.

We got back into the gift shop, closing the hidden door behind us. “I guess that’s good,” I said doubtfully, following him back into the living room. “I mean, you can’t just remember the nice stuff. That wouldn’t be…” I searched for the right word. “Real.”

He made an unhappy sound, but didn’t disagree. “Sure makes for a romantic date, doesn’t it.”

We were in front of the sofa, where his chair used to sit. I gave him a gentle push, and he sank down into it. “How’s your back?” I inquired, sitting down sideways in his lap. It wasn’t quite the same as it had been in the past, but close enough.

“’s fine,” he mumbled, clearly still fighting with the unpleasant memories.

“Want to put on the tv for a while?” I asked. “No kids around to complain about our lame old-people shows.”

“Yeah, okay.”

He didn’t sound enthused, but after a few truly stupid commercials he started to enjoy himself. When he laughed, I decided it was safe to resume conversation. “Too bad your bedroom isn’t here anymore,” I said lightly. “There were a _lot_ of memories in there.”

“Yeah, I got some of those already.” He’d found a nature show on tv; a couple of wolves were fighting for dominance. “Alright, a fight! Which one you rooting for, sweetheart?”

I watched for a minute before deciding. “The darker one. He looks like he wants it more.” I hoped they didn’t kill each other. That was the trouble with nature shows, from my point of view. Something cute always wound up dead.

Luckily, both of them were still alive when the show cut to a commercial. Stan must have felt my relief, because he laughed. “What’s the matter, you feel bad for the puppies?”

“Yes.” I glared defiantly. “Can’t we watch _humans_ beat the shit out of each other instead?”

He laughed again. “I love your vicious streak! Okay, let’s see what else is on.”

We couldn’t find any boxing or wrestling, but there was a sitcom rerun on another channel. We relaxed for a while, doing exactly what I’d suggested. We didn’t need to be tackling something important every hour of the day. I was pretty content just to cuddle and listen to Stan’s colorful commentary on the show.

“No, ya moron, she _likes_ you! Why is this guy so thick?”

The obvious answer was that that’s how sitcoms work. If there were no ridiculous misunderstandings, there’d be no plot and no laughs. But I wasn’t going to say that. I liked watching him yell at the characters. “So what would _you_ do in his shoes?” I asked instead.

“If I was a rich bastard who lived in an apartment like _that,_ looked like _him_ , and had thousands of people hanging on my every word, I wouldn’t spend all my time in a dumb little coffee shop, for one thing.”

I made a face. “Eh, who wants an apartment like that anyway? I’d be scared to _touch_ anything for fear of messing it up. Who exactly is he trying to impress?”

“Not girls, clearly,” Stan muttered, as if the main character’s ineptitude with women was some kind of personal insult.

“I dunno, some girls are into shit like that. Fancy dinners out and expensive wines, theater and art exhibits and fast cars…” I made another face. “I’ll take homecooked dinners _in_ , watching heist movies on our sofa, an exhibit of Mabel’s drawings, and a drive around town in the Stanmobile.”

His arm tightened around me. “That’s why you’re my girl.”

I grinned. “Cause I’m low maintenance?”

“Cause you like the right stuff,” he corrected me.

“Cause I’m a cheap date,” I countered.

“Cheap? You kidding? You know how much you cost me in groceries?”

“I buy groceries with my account.”

“Mortgage?”

“Also my account.”

“Lingerie?”

“You stole it.”

“…Gas?” He was stretching now, and he knew it. I laughed. “Jeez Teegs, you put it like that it makes me sound like _I’m_ the expensive one!”

“And don’t you forget it,” I teased, poking him lightly in the chest.

“ _But_ , I’m worth every penny.” He poked me right back.

I leaned forward so that his hand moved from poking me in the chest to cupping one breast. “I never said you weren’t,” I breathed before kissing him.

Since we were on a sofa, we were able to move from vertical to horizontal very quickly. I opened my eyes as I fumbled urgently with the button on his pants, completely disregarding the fact that this was someone else’s living room. When I’d succeeded in my mission, I got a brief view of the wooden beams and stones that made up the wall opposite me. It gave me a strong sense of déjà vu; maybe ten days ago I’d been on my back here in Stan’s old chair, my butt elevated to a high angle by its arm, my legs spread into a wide V, hands clutching helplessly at the other arm above my head, seeing that same wall over his shoulder.

It’s a memory I very much wanted to relive, and the thought of it sent a faint groan of longing over the back of my throat.

Stan was on his feet, looking down at me as he finished removing his pants. For the span of several seconds he froze, eyes going wide behind his glasses, and I wondered if he was recalling the same thing as me. But then he blinked, shook his head, and flashed a deliciously predatory smile my way. “I see what you’re thinking. You’re gonna need to move all the way to the end if you wanna pull that off.” He paused as I gulped and nodded. “And don’t even think about taking anything off yet.”

I immediately scooted down to the foot of the sofa, my feet dangling over the arm and into thin air. Stan finished removing his own clothes first, making me wait, giving me time to remember that again, this was someone else’s sofa and we were _terrible_ people. Then I got a look at him naked and forgot all about everything else. Every inch, I thought as my eyes ran over his body. I loved every inch of him.

No, _loved_ might not be the best word in this case. I _did_ love him, but what I was feeling right now was a lot more carnal. _Wanted_. I _wanted_ every inch of him.

He gave another one of those grins that stirred anticipation and impatience inside me, and walked slowly around the end of the sofa to stand at my feet. He wrapped his hands around my ankles, pulling me forward until my butt was propped up at the very edge of the sofa’s arm. He set my feet on his shoulders, making the angle even steeper, and stepped forward until he could reach my underwear. I was nearly panting with desire by the time he pulled them off.

Next he pushed my dress up all the way to my armpits, presumably enjoying his first look at the velvet chemise. Thanks to the angle I was at, my breasts were nearly spilling out the top of it. Stan ran his hand up my side, over the soft red fabric, and I wrestled with my dress until I got it completely off.

“I chose good,” he remarked, sounding pleased with himself as he dragged his hands back down to my hips.

I nodded vigorously, glad he liked it but very ready for him to stop standing around appreciating the aesthetics. My back arched out of its own accord, the movement rolling down my spine and into my hips like a wave. My mind felt like a record skipping on its track— _oh please, touch me more, please, touch, hit me, hit me, hit me, hit me…_

Well, he wasn’t a mind reader; he didn’t throw any punches. But he could read my body language well enough to know I was very ready. He slid his hands from my hips under the curve of my butt, letting my knees fall over his arms as he lifted me to just the right spot.

Two pushes and he was in deep. I groaned in satisfaction and tipped my head back into the sofa cushions, hands scrabbling above my head for something to hold on to. I had very little control in this position, and the sensations were intense. It went on for a few incredible minutes, during which I came maddeningly close to orgasm several times.

I was biting into the meat of my own hand, enjoying the dull pain it created while smothering my louder moans, when Stan stopped. I opened my eyes to see him leaning over the arm, one hand on the back of the sofa, shaking his head. “I gotta lay down,” he told me frankly. “This is too much work.”

“Of course!” He let go of my legs, and I rolled off the sofa at once, ceding the spot to him. He stretched out on his back, and I knelt next to the sofa. “Are you okay?”

He gave me a look that was almost offended. “I’m fine, jeez! Just needed a break from doing all the work.”

“Oh.” I smiled wickedly, trailing a finger slowly down his chest. “So you _do_ want to keep going?”

“I…” He gave up trying to speak when I kissed him a few inches below his stomach. I kept going. His hand found its way into my hair. I crawled up onto the sofa, crouching between his knees, and _really_ used my mouth. I liked it. I could taste myself on him, and feel the excitement I was creating. Under my hand, the muscles in his legs were tense to the point of trembling. My body responded to his exhilaration—I felt pretty elated myself. I wanted more, but I also wanted _this_. This, this, this, there was the skipping record in my head again. Stan’s hand tightened on the hair at the back of my head, and I moved my mouth up and down with even more intensity. Quicker, but not too quick, all of it though, this this this _this THIS—_

My hips snapped forward with longing, and I was shaking when he came. I swallowed repeatedly, partly because I’d always found it to be quicker and less messy, but mostly because I enjoyed the taste of victory. Afterward, I kissed my way back up his chest and stretched myself out on the sofa beside him.

Eyes closed, he smiled lazily and put his arm around my back to keep me from toppling off; the sofa wasn’t especially wide. “Wasn’t expecting that.”

I grinned. “Didn’t hear you raising any objections, though.”

“Hey, I’m not crazy!”

I laughed softly into his shoulder. Behind me, I could hear the tv still going. Sounded like we’d missed the end of the show. Oh well. I closed my eyes and silently enjoyed the familiar heat and smell of the man next to me. Just feeling him breathing was nice. My thoughts drifted.

“You know what we should do?” I muttered dreamily, half drunk on endorphins.

“Put some clothes back on?” He didn’t sound especially enthused about the prospect, but I supposed he had a point.

“In a minute. Comfy.” What had I been thinking of? Oh, right. “Sometime, I mean. Not right now. But we should go fishing again.” I yawned and stretched my arm out over his other shoulder. “And bowling. Hey!” A new idea occurred to me, exciting enough that it prompted me to open my eyes and turn my face up toward his. “If we have a kid, you can teach _him_ how to drive a boat and tie fishing knots and…” As I spoke, I could almost _see_ Stan teaching a little toddler how to drive a boat. Or a golf cart.

Or a car.

Crap.

A laugh rumbled in Stan’s chest. “Trust me, sweetheart, you don’t want a little version of _me_ running around. You know how much trouble I got into? How much stuff I broke? How many people I pissed off?”

“Nonsense,” I said stubbornly, “I bet you were adorable.”

“I snuck off on my mom all the time,” he warned me. “I used to climb up to Ford’s bed and jump off onto Sherman.” He might have intended this as a cautionary tale, but he was smiling to himself at the memories. “I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I swore. I got some sorta cut or scrape just about every day. I tried to bring a _possum_ home one time.”

“I like possums,” I insisted. “They eat bugs.”

“I spent weeks training him in the alley,” he told me. “Got bit a few times, but he turned out okay. Named him and everything.”

“Is this supposed to convince me that you were a terrible child?” I asked, propping myself up on one elbow. “Because that is absolutely precious.”

“Oy.” He rolled his eyes upward. “Nothing turns you off, does it.”

I shook my head and ran the backs of my fingers tenderly along his cheek. We shared a smile and subsided back into comfortable silence. I tucked my elbow back under me, resting my head back on his shoulder, and was just starting to get drowsy again when he cleared his throat.

“I did think about it,” he said, and at first I had no clue what he was talking about. “When you were here, before. The way you talked about your kids…” He didn’t seem to have all the right words for what he was trying to say, but I was beginning to understand. “And when I realized I wanted you to stay, I thought, maybe…” He shifted his weight and tried again. “I thought maybe if you did…”

I couldn’t help it—I laughed. What he was saying was so sweet, but the irony was just too perfect. “You were thinking about knocking me up,” I repeated, just make sure I had this right. “In eighty-nine.”

“What’s so funny?” He twitched away from me, looking hurt.

“Because that’s exactly what you _did._ And you spent twenty-five years thinking you _hadn’t_ ,” I explained, squeezing him in a hug. “That’s all.”

“Heh.” He stared at the ceiling. “Least I remember more of it now. It’s all screwed up, but…” He shrugged. “Membering helps.”

I forced myself to sit up. “Want to go remember some more, then?”

“Does it mean I gotta put on clothes?”

“Yes.”

“Then no.”

The brusqueness of his response amused me. “You’re saying to want to dance naked?”

“I’m sayin’ I don’t want to get up.”

“So you want to traumatize Soos and Melody when they get home?”

“Fine,” he sighed, groaning as he pushed himself up into a sitting position beside me. “I’ll put my shorts back on.”

I’d never gotten around to removing my chemise, so all I really had to do was find my panties. I also picked my phone up from the end table, and after checking my messages I pulled up my 60s playlist. “You sure you don’t want to go hang out in the parlor? Bring back some more memories of me embarrassing myself?”

“You know,” he suggested as he pulled on his boxers, “if I’m gonna get dressed, I think I wanna go fishing. Now that you mentioned it.”

“Night fishing?” I asked skeptically. We weren’t exactly dressed for it.

“Sure! The kinda light you give off, the fish’ll go nuts for it.”

Honestly, going out on the lake in his crappy little boat at night sounded very romantic. But… “I thought you weren’t going to rest until you got every last memory from ‘89 back?”

“I think I got enough.” He waggled his eyebrows at me, suggesting that he’d reacquired a fair few explicit memories this evening. “Least for now.” He hesitated before adding “I don’t wanna get _too_ hung up on old memories.”

“Not at the expense of making some new ones?” I offered, pulling my dress back over my head.

“Exactly.” He grinned, hit me with a finger gun, and stood up. “I know Soos has a pole lying around outside this place. Let’s go dig up some worms.”

“You sure know how to show a girl a good time,” I observed with a smirk.

“ _Course_ I do,” he answered confidently, grabbing his shirt from the floor. “You coming, or what?”


	4. Chapter 4

“So how was it?”

“Oh, you know.” I slid down the back of the porch swing. “Buckets of fun. Pee in a cup. Go get a panel of bloodwork. Run back over here and sit around while we wait for the results. Oh, have a pap smear while we’re at it. Good times.” It hadn’t been _that_ bad, really. I’d had a book in my purse, and no major aversion to needles. But it had been a long, tedious afternoon.

“And?” Stan prompted, looking legitimately anxious.

At that, I gave him a sunny smile. “Everything looks great. I’m healthy, in good shape, and every single thing they checked for came back negative.”

“ _Everything_?” he asked doubtfully.

“Not _everything_ ,” I clarified, amused. “I’m pregnant alright. Didn’t we already establish that last week?”

He shrugged, putting on a façade of irritation to mask his embarrassment. “Just making sure, jeez! I don’t wanna turn my life upside-down based on some cheap little stick with a plus-sign on it.”

“I guess that’s fair.” Given that I’d never seen him go to a doctor, I hadn’t realized he put that much stock in them. “Though, I mean…you would have known it for sure sooner or later, either way.” I looked down at my stomach and made a face. “Ugh, I’m going to get _huge_.”

“Ugh,” Stan agreed, his expression mirroring my own. That was absolutely _not_ the reassuring response I was looking for, but at least he was being genuine. “So what was all the negative stuff?”

“Bad stuff?” I spread my hands vaguely. “Infections, STDs, gestational diabetes, genetic conditions, I don’t know. A big long list of stuff the doctor rattled off right before they gave me about a hundred pages of print-outs. If you want to read through it yourself, it’s still sitting in the passenger seat of my car.”

Stan stared at me, eyebrows raised. I cocked my head to the side and stared back, wondering what the heck he was getting at. “The car you just let Dave and Mabel take to pick up their friends?”

I clapped both my hands to my mouth. “Fuck _me_!” I exclaimed in dismay.

“I think that’s how we got into this in the first place,” he said, running a hand over his face.

“Okay…” I took a deep breath. “It’s not the end of the world. They’ll probably just throw it in the back without even looking.”

Stan looked supremely skeptical. “Sweetie, this is _Mabel_ we’re talking about.”

I grimaced—he was right. “It’s still _possible_ she’ll be too busy talking or texting to bother with a bunch of papers. Or with a little luck, Dave will get in first and shove them out of the way _for_ her.”

“A _little_ luck? Sweetie, that’d take a _lot_ of luck. Just tell ‘em all later tonight, that’s what I say. They’re grown-ups.”

In a very literal sense, _no_ , they were _not_ grown-ups. None of them were. And even though I knew what he meant, I’d wanted to find the perfect way to tell them all. I loved Mabel, but the idea of her prancing in and beating me to the punch was not a happy thought. I mean, shit, I hadn’t even finished telling _Stan_ about the appointment yet.

“Well I’m crossing my fingers anyway,” I told him with resignation. “Guess that’s all I _can_ do at this point.”

“What’re you scared of, anyhow?”

I flinched before muttering “That we don’t know what the hell we’re doing and we’re going to screw this up?”

He smiled a little sadly. “ _I_ might screw it up, sure, but _you_? You’ve done this three ti—ha, almost counted Horace there for a second, you believe that? You’ve done this twice already. You seem like you know what you’re doing.”

I leaned my head into his shoulder. “Last time I did it I was 27, and it was planned. I have no _clue_ what the fuck I’m doing.”

“Not making me feel any better there, sweetie.”

I shook my head, but a tiny smile started to form. “And you saying _ugh_ when I talked about getting huge, that was supposed to make _me_ feel better?”

“What? You’re still hot right _now_!”

My subsequent laugh turned into a sigh, but my mood lifted at least a little. “That’s something, I guess.” I kissed his cheek, letting him know I’d accepted the compliment, and then settled back against his shoulder. “April 17,” I told him when I’d got my thoughts back on track.

“Whazzat?” He was staring thoughtfully in the direction of the fence, where a woodpecker was attacking the gate.

“The due date?” Sometimes, Stan, honestly! He hadn’t even been _at_ the appointment, the least he could do was focus! “Which tallies with what I figured myself, but nice to get confirmation.” He kept staring off by the fence, his brow slightly crinkled. I sighed and gave up. “What are you thinking about?”

“Huh?” He blinked at me. “Sorry, sweetie, didn’t catch that.”

I felt my own brows crease in concern. “You think you need a new hearing aid?”

“What? No. Maybe.” He rubbed the back of his neck and dragged his attention all the way back to me. “Was just thinking about space.”

Didn’t see _that_ one coming. “Space?” I repeated doubtfully. Not _outer_ space, surely.

Stan nodded. “I keep trying to think of some way to fit an extra kid in the house. Was thinking maybe we could build onto the place.”

That was why he’d been sizing up the yard. Unfortunately, the back porch ran along the dining room and the kitchen. Not the easiest place for an addition. However, the fact that _that_ was where his mind had been wandering to made me ridiculously happy.

“We’ll figure something out,” I assured him. “If things are still going well in a few months.” I swallowed. “Right now I’m just trying not to jinx it.”

“ _Jinx_ it?” He looked at me like I was being ridiculous. “The doc just told you everything checked out, right? No…” He waved his hand around, trying to remember my words. “No infections, or…conditions, anything like that.”

“Not so far,” I agreed warily. “Everything does look good, which is a relief, but they still have to do an ultrasound and some more tests in another month. I’m only five weeks in, honey. It’s hard to find anything too conclusive on a tiny little clump of cells.”

Stan refused to share my concern. “Hey, listen. You ever think about all the crap you’ve survived? And all the crap _I’ve_ survived? The kid might come out with an extra finger or glow in the dark skin, but nothing’s gonna _stop_ him.”

That was exactly the right thing to say. I wrapped my arms around him, shutting my eyes and feeling the heat of his shoulder against my cheek. “You’re right,” I told him gratefully. “He’s going to be _horrifically_ stubborn. Thanks.”

“You’re _thanking_ me for that?”

“No, I’m thanking you for being you.” I went quiet for a minute before asking, “You really think we should tell them all now?”

“You really think you can keep a secret in this house?”

I laughed ruefully. “Nope.” Guess that was my answer—wait, no. “Shit, what about Ford?”

Stan stiffened. “What about him?”

“You’re really going to tell the entire family and _not_ tell him? You know he’ll hear it from them within about five minutes if we break the news.”

He crossed his arms. “And?”

I sat back so I could really look at him. “I know you’re still pissed. I’m…not _as_ mad, anymore, but I’m still a little pissed at him too. I’ve come to terms with the fact that it was probably for the best, but…” I felt my hands start to ball into fists, and took a deep breath. “But he’s your brother, and you love him, and if he heard something like this from someone besides you…”

“It’d be what he deserved.”

“You’d regret it.” He didn’t acknowledge the truth of what I’d said, but his shoulders sagged. “I think we can keep a secret a few more days,” I said. “I mean, assuming Dave and Mabel don’t burst through the front door in ten minutes and announce it to the neighborhood.” I was still desperately hoping that didn’t happen. “Think about it for a few more days. Ford’ll be here in just a couple weeks anyhow. We can keep it under wraps until then if we try.” Unless I started throwing up every time I smelled cooking meat, like I had during the early days of my last pregnancy. I elected not to bring that up.

That seemed to cheer him up, surprisingly. “Yeah, sure. _If_ Mabel doesn’t find the stuff from your doctor and start making the kid its own scrapbook before bedtime, we can wait till Sixer gets into town.”

“You know you make that sound like a bet?” I asked, smiling affectionately at him.

“Oh, you wanna make it interesting?” he grinned.

I mimed getting out a notepad and pencil. “Now taking bets on baby’s arrival date. I’ll give you ten to one odds for him arriving on schedule, if you wanna take that action.”

Stan laughed. “On schedule? _My_ kid? Ten to one odds is too good, sweetie.”

I got up and stretched. “Another good point. You’re on fire tonight.” He mimed a finger gun in my direction, which never failed to make me smile. “How was work today?”

“Good! I had to call up to get some more snow globes—since Dipper dropped half of ‘em last week.” He glowered about that, but cheered again quickly. “The distributor’s got some new lady on customer service, and she didn’t know _what_ she was doing. I walked all over her.” That was a memory that made him beam with pleasure. “Wound up getting a new crate shipped out to us for practically nothing!”

I knew I should feel bad for the poor lady, whoever she was, but seeing Stan smile like that took priority. It’d be a big relief to Dipper, too, no doubt. “That’s great! Did you run any of the tours, or was it all paperwork today?”

“Course I ran some of the tours! You think I’m gonna let a day go by without letting those rubes see the real Mr. Mystery?”

Yes. There had already been plenty of days when he had done exactly that. But I was always happy to hear he’d gotten to spend time on his favorite part of the job. Soos was a decent tour guide and a great creative mind, but merchandise and budgeting were not his strengths. In the interest of keeping profits up, Stan tended to focus more on that. If he’d been doing tours, it told me that business had been booming today.

“Nice,” I said appreciatively. “And were all these rubes in a particularly spendy mood today?”

“You know, now that you mention it, they _were_.” Stan laughed. “One of them even tried to buy the ladder to the roof!”

Suppressing a smile, I asked “Did he say _why_?”

“Didn’t say…probably wanted to climb down to the bottom of the lake and catch some fish!” He slapped his own knee at that joke, laughing harder.

“And?” I prompted. “Did you sell it to him?”

“Tried to,” he admitted easily. “But his wife shut him down. Pointed out they didn’t have any place to put a ladder in their fancy little smart car.”

I clucked my tongue in disappointment. “That’s too bad.”

“That’s what _I_ said! I coulda charged him five hundred bucks for that old thing, easy, and replaced it what that little step stool from the bathroom.”

“I think people would have a hard time reaching the roof with a step stool.”

“Then maybe they shouldn’t be up on the roof slacking off! See? Would’ve been a great deal all around.”

I wondered whether Dipper or Mabel had gotten wind of this potential _great deal_ and convinced the schmuck’s wife to talk him out of the purchase. “Still, sounds like you made enough without it.”

“Yeah, we did alright. I had to restock the freezer before heading home—they bought all the popsicles in there! Had to send Mel to the store and everything.”

The fact that most of the food for sale at the Mystery Shack could be bought for a quarter of the price at the grocery store a few miles down the road never seemed to do anything to dissuade the tourists. It was marketing genius. “It’s August, and there’s no air conditioning in that place. You could start charging for _tap_ water and they’d shove their money at you!” I regretted the words almost as soon as I’d spoken them. The look on his face was way too excited. “No, Stan, you can’t _actually_ charge for water!”

“Why not? They’re thirsty, right?”

This battle was already lost. “It just seems…”

“Like a gold mine! I can charge extra for ice!” Yep, his brain was off and running now. Sometimes I really wish I’d keep my mouth shut when it comes to money. Sometimes I think that my inability to do so is exactly what makes me perfect for Stan.

He was still imagining dollar signs on cups of water when I heard my car pull into the drive. Anxiety surged through me, and I abandoned the swing to slip through the back door as I heard teenage chatter and giggles.

“Oh my gosh, you’re so _bad_!” Mabel was laughing as they came through the front door.

“I am not!” protested Grenda, also laughing. “It’s _true_!”

“How would _you_ know if it was?” Dave responded; he wasn’t laughing, but his face was pink enough that I knew he’d only just stopped.

“I thought _everyone_ knew! Tell them, Candy!”

Candy removed her glasses and cleaned them on her shirt, smiling slyly. “She is not wrong, he—” Then she noticed me, hovering in the hallway, and stopped. “Oh, hello Mrs. Kettle!”

More giggling.

I lifted my eyebrows austerely. “Hi guys. How’s it going?”

Mabel was still attempting to get her laughter under control. “We’re—we’re good.”

I eyed her suspiciously. “Yeah? Dave got you there and back safely, I see.”

“Mom!” Dave gave an exaggerated sigh. “Why do you always have to do that? When have I _ever_ crashed your car? I’m _sixteen_! I’m _responsible,_ okay?”

Grenda elbowed him in the ribs. “Yeah, cause _responsible_ people totally go d—”

Dave’s eyes widened, and he clamped a hand over her mouth. This triggered a fresh bought of giggles from all sides.

I tried folding my arms and giving them a conspiratorial smile. “Wanna let me in on the joke?”

“No, cause you’re not _cool_ ,” Dave shot back. Alright, maybe I shouldn’t have implied I didn’t trust his driving.

“Why, because I don’t make out with my boyfriend in public? Because I hate to break it to you, but—”

“ _Eww_!” he objected strongly, grabbing Candy by the arm as he attempted to hurry them all upstairs. “Get upstairs before she tries to _tell_ us!”

The four of them ran up to Mabel’s room, laughing the entire way. I’d feel bad about embarrassing him, but I suspected he didn’t actually mind that much. Mabel certainly didn’t seem perturbed. Besides, they were all getting free pizza tonight, so they didn’t really get to complain.

After I heard their door shut, I went out to check on my car. The stack of papers from my appointment was on the floor of the back seat, upside-down, with shoe prints on the back. If they _had_ seen it, they’d certainly gone through a lot of trouble to cover their tracks. It seemed far more likely that Dave had thrown it out of the way before Mabel got in, and no one had bothered to look.

Miracles did happen!

With a little spring in my step, I went upstairs to look in on the boys. I walked past the giggles and whispers coming from behind Mabel’s door, going up to the third floor. When I got close, I could hear faint sounds of gunfire and less faint sounds of boys taunting each other. Video games, in Nicky and Horace’s room. I listened for a minute, establishing that all three of them were playing something in there, and retreated back downstairs.

Stan had come inside while I was up there, now stretched out with a can of Pitt on the sofa. He looked extremely comfortable. I grinned at him and shoved his legs out of the way. “Guess we’re waiting on Ford after all.” I held up the handful of footprint-adorned paperwork.

“No kidding!” He held out his hand for them. It wasn’t really exciting reading, but I passed it to him anyway. “What’re the odds?”

“Better than you thought, clearly.” I grinned wider. “You’re losing your touch!”

“Not losing _this_ touch,” he countered, brazenly slipping a hand up my blouse.

I let him get away with it for a minute, though I pushed him off before it could turn into anything too serious. “Don’t start anything you can’t follow through on.”

“Who said I can’t follow through?”

“Me. Because there are seven teenagers in the house right now, and I have to figure out how many pizzas to order.”

“Three. One vegetarian, one sausage, one plain pepperoni.”

“You think those boys are going to settle for three slices each?”

“Teegs, as long as I get _my_ slices, I really don’t care.”

“What kind of father are you going to be?” I gasped, acting far more scandalized than I actually was.

“The kind that gets all his pizza,” Stan responded, unperturbed.

*

My luck had held for a full two weeks. That was pretty remarkable, all things considered. My morning sickness had manifested about a week ago, but it wasn’t serious enough to prevent me doing any of my ordinary activities. I’d only thrown up once, in fact, and it hadn’t been due to any smells from the kitchen. No one had walked in on any personal conversations or uncovered the medical information and _next appointment_ card in my dresser drawer. I didn’t like keeping secrets from my kids, but I was also starting to get a little excited about the big reveal.

Better yet, Ford had called up the other day to check on plans for his upcoming visit, and the ensuing conversation had been pretty civil. Not quite cordial, not yet, but once they talked it out in person I was pretty sure they’d be alright. I was definitely glad he was still planning on coming; my own feelings toward Ford might be cool at the moment, but the kids were looking forward to seeing him.

And having him here meant that we could spill the beans. It’d be a huge relief—I wasn’t nearly as good at keeping secrets as Stan was.

He got in on a Saturday, so I was at the Shack when the bus rolled in. They didn’t technically need my help this weekend, but I knew Dipper and Mabel would ditch their duties and run off with their great uncle the moment he arrived. Unless he was feeling especially cranky, I’d bet even money that Stan would too. That meant Soos and Melody might appreciate having someone else around to lend a hand if tourists started pouring in.

Predictably, Dipper and Mabel disappeared about fifteen minutes before the bus was due to arrive. Stan was out on the grounds, running one of the more extended tours. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to distract himself, or just trying to make all the tourists extra hot and thirsty. Probably a bit of both. I was cleaning the bathroom while Melody manned the register. The stupid tourists couldn’t be _that_ dehydrated, based on the amount of times they used the facilities. Mopping up somebody’s bad aim for the second time today made the $2 cups of tap water feel extremely justified.

It also made me look forward to making that announcement at home tonight. You don’t ask the pregnant lady to go scrub the public toilet. Well, Melody wouldn’t, anyway.

In the distance, through the open windows, I did hear the bus pull up around two o’clock. But no one except customers turned up inside, and the kids never came back, so it was safe to assume they and Ford had found each other. About half an hour later, when I was back to running the second register next to Mel, Stan came through the guest shop door. He came directly to me, slipping an arm around my waist and pulling me away from the register. The guy I’d been ringing up started to object, but Stan shot him a glare ferocious enough to shut anyone up. When he turned his attention back to me, though, he was all smiles.

“Ford’s here.”

“I figured as much. How is he?” I asked cautiously.

He smiled again, his eyes crinkling up at the corners. “Good. Spent the whole bus ride doing work, can you believe that?”

That question was so ridiculous it startled a laugh out of me. “Yes, I can!”

“Anyway, me and the kids are gonna run him back home. You coming?”

His suit was warm to the touch, and slightly damp. Hopefully he changed into something lighter weight when he got home. “No, you go ahead. Cool off, take it easy, enjoy your brother for a while.” I gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, enjoying the way he smelled, and stepped back. “Check on the boys for me. They were supposed to clean up the living room, not just play games all day.”

“Got it.” He jerked his head once before heading back out the door. “Call if you need a ride home, okay? I’ll send Dave.”

Smiling and shaking my head, I went back to helping impatient customers.

As it turned out, I didn’t need to call for a ride. When the Mystery Shack closed its doors for the day, Soos informed me that he was picking up his abuela’s vacuum from the repair shop, so he’d be going right past my neighborhood if I needed a lift. That worked out pretty perfectly! I thanked him and accepted immediately.

“I mean, I told her—I’m a handyman,” he explained as we took his pick-up truck toward the other end of Gravity Falls. “I could _totally_ have fixed up that vacuum and made it way better! Added some, like, turbo suck action, nicer handle, a better hose… But she said no.” He shook his head, boggled that anyone could turn down such a great offer. “She said I’m talented, but there are some things, uh…some things that aren’t made to be toyed with. I guess her vacuum’s one of them.” He shrugged and turned on the radio. “So! How long’s Ford gonna be in town this time? I know you told me, but I—haha, I forgot. Two weeks?”

“Two weeks,” I agreed. “He’ll head back to Maryland the same day the twins head back to California. Two days before my boys go back to school.” How was that only two weeks away already? You’d have thought my time travel escapades would make the summer feel _longer,_ but it seemed like it had just flown by. “You and Mel are still coming to dinner tomorrow, right?”

“Course we are, dawg! Wouldn’t miss it.”

“Good.” I smiled. “I’m sorry I didn’t invite you _tonight_. Stan and Ford have been kind of…at each other the past few weeks. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t inviting you into something ugly.”

He nodded amiably. “Oh yeah, I heard all about that! Guess it’s going okay though, huh?”

“So far, so good.” I let out a slow sigh. “So how are _you_ doing? The kids always mob you when you’re over, and at the Shack you’re always busy.”

“Pretty good, pretty good…I’m teaching Melody how to play Zombie Pigs, so that’s been a blast! She’s really good, too.” A song he liked came on the radio, and he dropped the conversation for a minute to sing along. It was some modern crap I didn’t care for, but to each his own. When it ended, I politely asked what sort of game Zombie Pigs _was_ , since I didn’t recall seeing it around our house. He described a cooperative cartoon adventure that I wound up wishing my boys _would_ play, because it sounded fun and adorable.

Soos was still filling me in on details of their last gaming marathon when he pulled the truck up in front of my house. “There you go, dude! What time tomorrow?”

I had to stop and think. “Probably five. That work for you?”

“Sure thing!”

I pushed open the door and jumped down from the truck. “We’ll call you if anything changes. Thanks again for the ride! Tell Abuelita I hope the vacuum works just like it used to!”

He laughed and drove off as soon as I slammed the door. Both cars were in our driveway, and I could hear laughter and voices coming from the backyard. I let myself in through the front, but since no one was in the living room I only stopped to kick off my shoes and drop my keys before heading straight into the back.

Someone—my money was on Mabel—had bought water balloons. We might not be rich enough for our own pool, but we were great innovators. Stan and Ford were in the swing on the porch, having a drink and staying mostly dry. I spared a moment to jealously eye their glasses of amber liquid, but after that I focused instead on appreciating the antics of the younger generation. Mabel and Dipper were chasing Waddles in circles around the sprinkler…or maybe it was Mable and Waddles chasing Dipper. Hard to say. They were both wearing swimsuits and had water balloons in their hands. Nicky was lobbing balloon after balloon in Dave’s direction, but his older brother kept ducking behind a tree trunk and returning fire with a water gun. Horace was seated on the edge of the porch, a few feet away from Stan, throwing balloons out of a bucket at anyone who came close enough. The exertion was sapping the color from his face, but he was laughing like a maniac.

Since there was nowhere else to sit, I planted my butt in Stan’s lap, leaning back at an angle. It wasn’t the _most_ comfortable, but it was dry and beat trying to squash myself between him and Ford. “I’m surprised they haven’t dragged you two into it yet,” I said by way of greeting.

“They don’t need old men like us holding them back,” Ford remarked, raising his glass to me in a small salute. “Care to join us?”

“Not just now. And who says you’d be holding them back? Give you ten minutes and I bet you’d invent a new water gun that would put Dave’s deluxe drencher to shame.”

“He doesn’t need ten minutes, cause it’s already been invented,” Stan cut in. “It’s called a fire hose, sweetie, and I don’t think you wanna use it on the kids.”

I laughed softly and twisted around to brush his lips in greeting. “Well, you’re right about _that_ part! They’re having fun, though.”

“We _are_!” Horace volunteered from end of the porch, proceeding to throw a yellow balloon at Mabel as she ran by. It caught her, bursting against her thigh, and she shrieked.

“He’s getting stronger,” Ford observed quietly as Horace resumed cackling.

“I know.” Stan grinned proudly, as though he could take some credit for Horace’s accomplishments. “Pretty cool, huh?”

Ford’s face was far more intent. “It’s fascinating. I’ve never seen anything like it. Dipper told me he _eats_ now?”

I nodded, sharing Stan’s proud smile. “He was _so_ excited about it!”

“Fascinating,” Ford repeated thoughtfully. “Granted, ghosts aren’t really my area of expertise. I studied them as a subset of the paranormal, nothing more. Dipper might know better than me, in this case. But I’ve never heard of such a thing before.”

A hint of concern crept up my spine. “You don’t think we need to _worry_ , do you?”

“Hm?” Ford shook his head, pulling himself away from his thoughts. “No, no, I shouldn’t think so. I was just thinking it would make for an extremely interesting paper.”

Stan’s smile disappeared. “He’s not your science project, Sixer,” he warned. “He’s a kid.”

In that moment, I’m not sure I had ever been more in love with him. I wiggled down into the space between him and Ford so that I could wrap my arms around him. His arm settled around my shoulder almost automatically.

Ford’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Of course not! I merely—”

A pink water balloon came out of nowhere, hitting Horace square in the chest. He let out a little yelp of surprise and vanished. He flickered back into view almost immediately, mouth ajar in shock, staring down at an outdated shirt that was somehow dripping. He didn’t hesitate to pick up another balloon. “Get back here, Nicky!” he shouted, jumping to his feet.

“No way!” Nicky shouted from a safe distance.

“Coward!” his little brother howled, lobbing the next balloon for all he was worth. It caught Dave, who had made the fatal error of stopping to pet Waddles. He screamed indignantly and turned his weapon in our direction, spraying water across the entire porch.

 _I_ screamed when the cold water hit me in the chest. Once I got over the shock, it actually felt pretty good, and my scream turned into a laugh. Ford looked down at his soaked dress shirt in dismay, but Stan extricated himself from my arms quickly, jumping to his feet. “Oh no you don’t!” he bellowed as Dave realized what he’d done and ran for cover of the tree. Stan took off after him, to the absolute delight of his niece and nephew. Dipper and Mabel had hit him with no less than five water balloons by the time he made it across the yard.

I settled in to watch, highly entertained. “How was your trip?” I asked Ford as Nicky monkeyed up the tree one-handed while the twins had Stan distracted.

“Tedious, but thank you.” He gave up on poking at his wet shirt with a sigh. “Sometimes I wish that instead of spending all that time working on a portal to another dimension, I’d set my mind to inventing a device that would let me travel quickly across _this_ one.”

“Crying baby right behind you on the flight?” I asked with a wry grin.

“Worse,” he answered darkly. “I was seated between a man who slept the entire time, blocking my access to the aisle, and a woman who insisted on attempting to make small talk the entire duration of the trip.”

“Oy.” I winced in sympathy. In the yard, Stan had Dipper by both arms and was holding him in place so Horace could launch more balloons at him. All three of them were laughing. Nicky was positioned on a tree branch above their heads, awaiting his moment. “So…looks like you and Stan are alright now?” I almost hated to bring it up, but it seemed important to know.

“I thought so.” Ford turned his attention to the wet spot on his shirt again. “But his reaction to my remark about Horace just now caught me off guard.”

I gave him what I hoped was a reassuring pat on the arm. “He’s just protective. With Dipper and Mabel gone most of the year, I think he’s actually starting to regard my boys as honorary great-nephews.”

“So I see.” He looked out at the yard with a fond smile, just in time to see Nicky drop his balloons from the tree. “You have a wonderful family, Teagan. My brother’s very fortunate.”

“Don’t talk like an outsider.” I turned my smile from my drenched, outraged boyfriend back to Ford. “This is your family, too. Just because we were pissed doesn’t mean you don’t belong here.”

That only made him shift awkwardly. “I honestly didn’t realize he would be so offended. In retrospect, I suppose I should have.”

“Eh.” I shrugged. “You probably _did_ save us from some awful time paradox. It’s just that finding out about those missing memories caught both of us off guard, and it really bothered him. Knowing it had happened and not being able to recall any of it was driving him crazy. Now that we’ve gotten most of it back, I think he’s less inclined to hold a grudge.”

“Yes, he informed me that you’d made substantial progress on that front.”

I managed not to smirk at his phrasing, but did glance at the nearly empty glass in his hand. Ford tended to include even more large words than usual after a drink or two. “Yes,” I agreed. “It’s been fun.” A look back out at the yard showed Waddles happily rolling in a new mud puddle and Stan refilling Dave’s dropped water gun. He needed the weapon, though—all the kids appeared to have turned on him and were attempting to force him back toward the porch where Horace waited with his remaining balloon stash. Never mind that he’d entered the fray to help Horace in the first place. Water balloon fights were lawless, vicious affairs. Every man for himself. Stan should really have known better than to get involved.

“How has work been?” I asked Ford.

“Oh, you know.” He lifted one shoulder in a small shrug. We weren’t exactly sure what he _did_ do for the government, but we knew it was something to do with science—closer, probably, to what most of the population considered science fiction—that he had good benefits, and that he wasn’t allowed to say much about it. For all I knew, he was creating dimensional portals for exclusively presidential use. Or maybe exchanging art and music with aliens. Really, it could be anything.

“Teegs!” Stan bellowed as Mabel attempted to scale his back. “Some back-up here?”

“Excuse me a moment,” I told Ford. “Coming, honey!” I grabbed a balloon from Horace’s bucket in each hand and launched myself into the fray.


	5. Chapter 5

My stomach was full of fish tacos and blueberry pie. Everyone, for a miracle, was still at the dining room table. Dipper and Ford were engaged in an unintelligible discussion on something called quarks. Mabel and Dave were trying to persuade a resistant Nicky into asking out his friend Amy. Horace was going back and forth between concentrating on each and every bite of pie, and joining the argument on Nicky’s side.

Under the table, I nudged Stan’s foot with my own. When I first started cooking dinner we’d had a chance to hide out in the kitchen and exchange a few words. Enough that I knew he was enjoying catching up with Ford, enjoying the _heck_ out of goofing around with the kids (despite needing a full change of clothes), and enjoying the prospect of dropping a giant bombshell on everybody after we ate. Well, if we had any hope of catching everyone in the same place tonight, now was the time. He looked at me in response to my touch, and I raised my eyebrows. _Ready?_ He flicked his eyes around the table, brought them back to me, and cocked his head sideways in something that was almost but not quite a nod. _If you are._

“So…” I cleared my throat, and not a single person besides Stan even looked at me. “So!” I repeated, louder. Dave glanced over curiously, but everyone else was far too into their own conversations.

“Hey knuckleheads!” Stan barked, and every head turned toward our end of the table. “Teagan’s making an announcement.”

I refrained from putting a hand over my eyes. I didn’t mind the attention, but that wasn’t quite the way I’d have gone about this. Oh well, the ball was rolling now. I smiled, a little tighter than usual because of my nerves. “I’ve—we’ve—been waiting for the right moment to say this. Um. Things….things might be a little different around here next summer.”

Mabel gasped ecstatically. “Are you guys getting married _too_?”

That hadn’t even occurred to me. Which it absolutely should have, if for no other reason than Mabel would _obviously_ jump to that conclusion. “Nnnnnnnno?” I said, shooting Stan an uneasy glance.

Naturally, he was unphased. “Guess again, pumpkin,” he grinned.

“Are you retiring for real?” Dipper asked curiously.

“We’re not _moving_ , are we?” Nicky asked fearfully. “We _can’t_ move!”

“Of course we’re not moving,” I reassured both him and Horace.

“I’m never retiring!” Stan announced at nearly the same time.

“You mean something _besides_ me having my own car?” Dave asked pointedly.

“Don’t count your chickens, kid,” Stan warned him brusquely. Dave scowled.

Ford digested all these suggestions as we refuted them, undoubtedly combining the information with other seemingly random tidbits in his head. I saw the idea hit his face before anyone else caught on, and when he caught my eye I smiled and nodded fractionally. His lips parted in surprise, and he immediately turned to Stan. “ _Really,_ Stanley?”

“Yep!” Stan leaned back in his seat, looking smug. As if creating life took some level of skill. As if we’d actually _planned_ it.

“Huh?” Nicky asked, catching on to the fact that Ford had clearly deduced something.

Dave’s eyes narrowed, looking probingly between the three adults, trying to figure out what we were saying without saying it.

“I don’t get it,” Horace whined, looking to Dipper for an explanation. But Dipper looked just as perplexed as the rest of them. Seriously? _No one_ could see what we were getting at? I wasn’t _that_ old, damn it! This wasn’t rocket science here!

Mabel’s eyes suddenly widened, and she clapped her hands to her mouth. “Ohmy _gosh!_ No _way_!”

“What? What?” Nicky demanded. “What am I missing?”

“You’re getting a brother, kiddo,” Stan informed him, still looking smug.

“I already have t—” Nick’s brain caught up to his mouth. “ _No_.”

“Mom?” Dave asked cautiously, looking for confirmation.

I nodded. “It’s still early, so a lot could go wrong. It’s kind of risky at my age. But I didn’t think it was fair to _not_ tell you.”

Dipper looked faintly horrified. Dave looked almost happy. Nicky just looked shocked, and Horace looked like he might cry. Mabel shrieked in excitement and jumped out of her seat. “I’m going to be an _aunt_?”

“Technically, Mabel, this child would be _your_ aunt. Or uncle,” Ford told her. That did nothing to deter her flinging her arms first around me, then around Stan. “Do you _know_ it’s a boy?” I heard Ford ask from somewhere outside the range of Mabel’s enthusiastic embrace. “Or are you just guessing?”

Stan laughed. “I don’t even know there’s only _one_ yet!”

“Don’t _say_ that!” I responded immediately. I was starting to get excited about the prospect of _one_ baby. I didn’t think I could handle two.

“Don’t worry, Teagan,” Ford said with a chuckle, “the gene for twins comes from the mother’s side. I think you should be safe.”

A small amount of tension went out of my shoulders. “Thanks. To answer your question, I’m assuming boy because, well…” I gestured around the table. Lots of boys.

“When?” Dave demanded as I finished detaching myself from Mabel.

“April. Still ages away.”

“What the hell are you thinking?” Nicky demanded, expression turning stormy. “We’re already sleeping asses to ankles and you want add a _baby_?”

_Asses to ankles. Thanks for teaching him that one, honey._ I sighed. “It wasn’t—”

“Don’t talk to Mom like that, jerk-off!” Dave jumped in to defend me, eyes flashing dangerously.

“Fuck off, you’ll be out of here in another two years anyhow. It’s not _your_ problem.”

“Guys! Stop it!”

“I’m looking out for _you_!” Nick rounded on Horace the peacemaker instead. “I already _have_ a little brother! I don’t another one! No one can take your place!”

“No one’s taking _anyone’s_ place,” Stan cut in, attempting to regain control of the conversation.

“I don’t _need_ you defending me,” Horace pushed back in a surprising display of strength. “ _I_ think a baby might be nice! It means when you and Dave are both married or off at college or whatever, I’ll still have someone my age around.”

This announcement was met with almost dead silence. Nicky, looking ashamed of himself, shot me a quick glance of apology. Dave ran a hand through his hair. Mabel was biting her lower lip fretfully. Under the weight of the silence, Horace turned translucent. “I know that’s how it works,” he muttered, his insubstantial eyes starting to glisten. “I’ve been through it before. You’ll all get older, or get a job somewhere else, or you’ll need more space, and you’ll move away.”

“Oh, sweetie.” I got up and walked around the table, pulling the kid into my arms. He sank partway into me, making me shiver, but then he firmed up and let me hug him. “We can’t help aging, I guess. But we’re not going to _leave_ you. You’re family.” It was in the back of my mind that by the very nature of life and death we _would_ someday leave him, for the cemetery if nothing else. But articulating that right now would not be helpful and anyway I suspected he’d already thought of it.

Horace nodded mutely and hugged me back.

“Kid,” Stan said, rising and following me, “I don’t know what it’s like where _you’re_ from—”

“I’m from here, Stan,” Horace grumbled, though his tears had stopped. “I’ve never actually _left_ Gravity Falls.”

“—but _we_ don’t abandon family,” he went on, unphased.

Horace’s eyes got round. “You think of me as family?”

Stan crinkled his brow. “Course I do! What, just cause you’re not blood, you think you don’t count? Family’s what you make it, kid.”

“I think they _made it_ a little too much,” Nicky muttered behind his hand to Dipper.

Despite my best efforts to remain serious and supportive in this critical moment, I snorted. “Glad you don’t need me to explain where babies come from, love.”

“Ugh, no.” He shuddered visibly. “Dad did that when I was eight and I still haven’t gotten over it.”

Dave winced and put his face in his hands, momentarily uniting them in brotherhood. “Neither have I. He was really bad at it.”

Mabel cringed and nodded too, though she must have been recalling something completely different. “The pituitary gland,” she whispered to herself in haunted tones. I raised my eyebrows inquisitively, but got no answer. Right.

I released Horace, but rather than return to my seat I cleared my throat. “Right. Well. So. It’s still early. The doctor told me everything looks good so far, but we’ll see what happens. I know it’ll mean changes. It’ll take some getting used to.” I looked around the table, letting my eyes linger on Nicky. “But I’m not going to apologize, because honestly? I’m excited.”

“As you should be!” Ford smiled broadly at me, then turned the grin on Stan. “It seems I get to be the first to offer my congratulations. I’m delighted for you both.”

“Thanks.” Stan beamed back at him. “That means you’ll be getting us some pretty good gifts, right?”

I mouthed “No” and shook my head, but Ford only laughed. “Of course! I look forward to spoiling the child.”

“Me too!” Mabel jumped back in. “We can babysit, right? I can use my pig carrier!”

“Sure thing, pumpkin,” Stan told her without hesitation. Personally, I might have hesitated a little—I couldn’t doubt her intentions, but I didn’t really want to think about my baby eating glitter and sprinkles.

“You can help me scrapbooking all those precious moments and memorable firsts,” I offered, hoping she’d be more taken with that idea.

“That’s great, Mom,” Dave volunteered, looking like he meant it.

Nicky’s face was a mixture of sulkiness and repentance, but he nodded. “Weird, but great.”

“Congratulations,” Dipper offered, baffled but apparently sincere. “April, huh?”

“Oh!” Mabel jumped up, running to the living room and returning with her phone. “I have to tell Candy and Grenda!”

I groaned silently. I was friends with Clara, Grenda’s mom. It would be much nicer if I was able to give her the news myself, but I also didn’t want to take this from Mabel. She was actually excited for us. “Can you ask them to keep it a secret for a day or two? I’m not ready for the whole town to know just yet.”

“Of course!” she promised at once, and started tapping away with her thumbs. A moment of silence followed, then Ford asked how I was feeling, and Dave asked whether it had happened when I was in the past, and Dipper asked if we’d thought about any names, and Nicky asked where it was going to sleep, and Horace asked whether I’d be leaving my job after the baby was born, and then Mabel was done texting and asking what the actual due date was, and Dipper asked if we thought the baby would glow like me, and Ford inquired about the tests the doctors had undertaken, and Stan and I spent the next half hour fielding eager questions.

When we finally crawled into bed that night, I was feeling relieved but exhausted. Stan looked equally drained, and groaned as he eased himself back onto the mattress. “Shoulda known better than to get in that water fight,” he muttered to himself.

I smiled, and motioned with my hand for him to roll over. “But it was so cute. I like seeing you play with the kids.”

He obligingly shifted onto his stomach, and I moved over to press the balls of my hands gently into his shoulders. “Didn’t see _you_ out there getting soaked.”

I kissed the back of his neck. “Of course not. Wouldn’t want to steal your thunder. And I like being dry.” I went silent, focusing on the clenched muscles around his shoulder blades. “That was really nice, what you said to Horace,” I eventually said, switching over to using my elbows. “I didn’t know you cared about him that much.”

Stan grunted, though I couldn’t tell whether that summed up his feelings or if I’d just hit a really good spot on his back. After a while, when I’d moved further down the spine, he said “You act like he’s your kid, sweetie. You love him like family. And you’re _my_ family. So that makes him one of us, too.”

Another smile touched my lips. “I love you.”

He rolled over, resting a hand on my waist. “Love you, too. What’d you think about what Mabel said?”

I blinked. “Mabel said a lot of things!”

His eyes twinkled at that. “Yeah she did. I mean about us getting married.”

“Oh!” I had to process that. “She’s been barking up that tree since last summer!” I paused, thinking about the fact that he’d brought it up. “Why? Do you want to?”

“I dunno.” He was looking at me, but not quite meeting my eyes suddenly. “Do you?”

Oh no, it was the baby conversation all over again. “I…don’t really care,” I admitted, hoping he didn’t take that the wrong way. “It might make things easier, in some ways. But I’m not in a big fuss about it. I didn’t think you even _could_ get married. Given you’re legally dead and all. So I guess I didn’t think about it.” I put a hand on his cheek, searching his eyes. “I have you. You call me your family, and you tell me you love me. The rest is just paperwork, isn’t it?”

“Seriously?” He sounded skeptical, but not offended. Phew.

“Seriously!”

“Okay, so whose name does the kid get?”

I felt the tiny crease appear between my eyebrows, evidence of my surprise that he’d even ask. “Kettle, obviously!”

Now _that_ , he clearly didn’t like. “Like hell it will!” I flinched, and he noticed. “Sorry. But it’s my kid, it’s gotta be a Pines!”

I sighed. “Can we sleep on it?”

“No,” he said stubbornly. “You’re only a Kettle cause you married into the name.”

“So, what? You want me to go back to O’Neill?”

“Course not! That’d be stupid. I’m just saying, that’s _my_ kid, not Frank’s. He should be a Pines.”

I was about to object with irritation, but out of nowhere a thought lodged itself in my brain. I couldn’t shake it, and it twisted my mouth up into a reluctant smile. “But then how would Mabel make all the little teakettle jokes?”

That surprised a laugh out of him. “You think anything’s gonna _stop_ her?”

We shared a smile, but then I sighed again. “You think Nicky’s going to be okay?”

“Sure,” he nodded, accepting the change of subject for now. “He’s just moody. He’s at that…sweaty age. You know how it is.”

“Ugh, yes,” I agreed. “Thirteen is the _worst_.” I remembered being thirteen. There were some fun memories, but also a lot of angst. And I hadn’t had half the things to worry about at that age that my boys did now. “I guess I am asking a lot of him.”

“Hey, cut that out.”

I didn’t realize I’d closed my eyes until I felt Stan’s hand on my face. “Huh?”

“Blaming yourself.” He ran his thumb along my cheekbone. “He’s gonna be just fine, Teegs. He’s a good kid, and you’re a good mom. So cut it out.”

I put my hand over the back of his and shut my eyes again, treasuring the sweetness of the touch. “I’ll try.” Another moment of content silence slipped by. Then I opened my eyes back up. “So are things all better with Ford?”

He rolled his eyes and shook his head at the mention of his brother. “Yeah.”

“Yeah?” I repeated skeptically, raising my eyebrows.

This time his eyes brightened, tiny smile lines appearing at the corners to betray how he felt deep down. “Yeah.”

“Okay.” I snuggled closer to him, fitting my head in the spot between his shoulder and his neck. It had been a busy day, and my body was processing a lot of changes, and lassitude was overtaking me.

“Okay?” Now he repeated my word back as a question. I smiled slightly and let my eyelids drift closed again. “What’s okay?”

“Everything,” I mumbled, and fell asleep.

*

The following day I could feel the entire household looking at me slightly differently, even if not all of them peppered me with questions. As the week progressed, though, everyone got used to the idea and relaxed. We did normal things. We went to work. We watched Soos go into an ecstasy of excitement upon learning that there was going to be a new member of the family. Dipper and Nicky talked Ford into starting a second campaign for their DD&MD group…not that it took much convincing. Stan and I took the living kids out fishing. I supervised more of Dave’s driving skills; when he didn’t have friends in the car, he was actually a very conscientious and responsible driver. We spent an evening playing Monopoly, mostly so we could watch Stan try to cheat and Ford act scandalized when he caught him. I made spaghetti and tikka masala and pot roast.

I had another doctor’s appointment. For this one, because I was over 40, they busted out the ultrasound. And for this one, because they busted out the ultrasound, Stan made a point to be there. The vaguely human knot of cells they showed us was about the size of a lima bean, but it had a fast, healthy heartbeat—and even better, the doctor couldn’t find anything to be concerned about. In another six weeks they’d do some additional bloodwork, testing, and imaging that would give more concrete answers. But in the meantime, I had a picture of our little bundle of cells, and I heard his rapid little heartbeat, and I was starting to think that against all the odds I might truly wind up bringing another person into the world.

It seemed almost too good to be true. So did a lot of things, lately. “Hey Mom,” Dave said the last weekend before the start of the school year. “When was the last time we got a red light?”

The one we’d just passed through had turned green just as we were pulling up to it. The question made me stop and think, because traffic lights hadn’t been high on my list of priorities lately (except to the extent of not blatantly running any). I couldn’t remember hitting a red light any of the times I was worried about making it to work on time this past month—in fact, I didn’t think I’d been late once this month! I’d put that down to not having to get the boys to school in the mornings. “I’m not sure,” I admitted, hearing the skeptical inflection in my voice as I answered. “Why?”

He shrugged, keeping his eyes on the road. I was allowing him to drive the car to meet Thompson at the arcade, but I had a hunch they’d be out late and didn’t like the idea of him driving himself home after dark. His boyfriend had a car and a little more experience. In fact, Thompson _could_ have just picked Dave up, but my son was so excited about getting his license it even meant he’d tolerate some extra time with me if it meant he got to drive. At any rate, I’d set it up so that I’d be taking my car back home and hopefully relaxing for the evening after dropping him off. Granted, yes, Candy and Grenda were sequestered with Mabel in her room, and the remaining boys had taken over the living room with their friends for one last DD&MD game, but the weather was pleasantly mild tonight. There was a warm breeze that felt very relaxing. Stan and I could sit out back for a while, then go hide in our bedroom and watch some tv if we wanted peace and quiet.

We came to another light, which showed no inclination to change from green to yellow. Dave turned smoothly into the downtown area that housed the local arcade. “It just seems weird,” he said, finally answering my question. “I’m supposed to be practicing all this stuff, but we never have any cross-traffic or red lights or anything.”

A tiny little crease appeared between my eyebrows; I could feel it sitting there, pulling downward. “They’ve probably got the lights set up to change whenever they sense traffic,” I offered thoughtfully. “But yeah, it is a little weird we haven’t caught one in a while.” There was the arcade, ahead on the right. Dave’s eyes flickered around as he looked for a good parking spot. “Good weird, though! Way better than getting every single red light in town, like I usually do.” I grinned at him as he executed a better parallel parking job than I ever could.

Only after putting the car in park did he turn and return my smile. “Yeah, I guess.” He undid his seatbelt and flipped down the visor for one last inspection of his appearance in the mirror.

“Ten-thirty,” I reminded him. “You’re going to be back at school in two days.”

He sighed. “Which is why I want to stay out with my boyfriend _now_.”

I nodded. “I know. But…augh, alright. Eleven. But tomorrow you’re spending time with the family!”

“Gross,” he retorted, but the smile hiding at the corners of his mouth betrayed him. “Thanks, Mom!” He pushed open the door.

“Have fun, be safe!” I told him, opening my own door so I could jump out and claim the driver’s seat. If this had been the El Diablo I’d have just slid over the leather bench seats, but my personal ride wasn’t nearly as fun. “I love you!”

He waved at me before strolling through the door into the building.

I didn’t get a single red light on the ride home, either. Now that it had been pointed out to me, it was hard to miss. I tossed the thought back and forth in my mind as I drove. Surely it wasn’t anything to worry about. Such a small thing. And a low-key streak of good luck was a _good_ thing, anyhow. It shouldn’t feel ominous, like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Just learn to accept something happening here and there that _isn’t_ a mess, Teagan. You’ve swallowed fireflies and gotten abducted and travelled back in time and sprained your ankle and accidentally gotten pregnant, that’s enough bad luck for a year and a half. Let’s let a few things go _right_. Don’t make an issue out of nothing. Enjoy it while it lasts.

When I got home, I sat on the porch next to Stan with the windows open so that we could hear the kids playing their game. Tomorrow afternoon were sticking Dipper and Mabel on a bus back to California, but you wouldn’t know it the way they were enjoying themselves right now. We could hear the girl’s laughs and shrieks from upstairs, though (probably thankfully) most of the words weren’t loud enough for us to catch. From the living room behind us we could hear Nicky, Horace, Mark, Cody, Amy, and even Ford checking stats and casting spells, only slightly more restrained than Mabel’s crowd. They were all happy sounds. I lay on my back on the swing, resting my head on Stan’s thighs, one hand draped over my abdomen. Dusk was falling, and the bizarre fireflies that persisted through the entire summer were glowing on and off throughout the yard. Everything felt serene, almost too good to be true.

I was afraid to open my mouth and break the silence.

“What’s eating you?” Stan asked, glancing down at me suspiciously when the quiet had lasted too long.

“What makes you think something’s eating me?”

He shook his head, not buying it for a second. “Come on, spit it out.”

I watched the path of one hopeful firefly searching for a mate. “I can’t believe it’s the end of summer already. I’m not ready.”

He continued to look suspicious, but he didn’t accuse me of lying this time, either. “Yeah,” he admitted instead, following my line of vision into the fading light of the yard. “I hate having to ship the kids off back home. I always—” For just a second, his voice caught, and there was a telltale huskiness the words that came next. “—always wonder if they’ll really be back. Next year.”

“Aw, honey!” I reached awkwardly around him to pat his arm from my prone position. “Of _course_ they’ll be back next year! This place is special to them.”

I could feel his shrug, even as I continued to watch the fireflies. “Probably. They won’t wanna miss Soos’ wedding, or the baby. But they’re growing up, sweetie. They’ve got their friends and teams or whatever back home. Wendy and her crowd, they’re done with school, they might not even be _around_ after this summer. We’re running out of space here. Everything’s changing, isn’t it.”

I kept my palm against his arm, pressing reassurance through it. “Nothing stays the same forever,” I reminded him quietly. “Another two years and _Dave_ will be leaving. But, Stan.” I rotated toward him, looking up through the washed-out sunset light into his eyes. “Two years ago I would never have imagined I’d be here with you.” I exhaled a soft snort as I smiled: something that could become a laugh when it grew up. “And I _certainly_ wouldn’t have guessed we’d be expecting a baby. Thought for _sure_ I was finished on that front.”

“Takes some getting used to,” he agreed with a ghost of a smile.

I returned the smile with interest. “My point is, change is inevitable. But the kids love us, and I don’t think that’ll go away unless we screw up in ways I can’t even imagine. And no matter what else, we’ll be going through all the changes together.” I moved my hand down to his, bringing it up to my lips and kissing the back of it.

His smile this time was wry, but broader, and he pulled me in closer against him. “Oughta be enjoying this while it lasts,” he remarked, sounding happier.

“Enjoying what?”

“You and me!” I had our joined hands wrapped around my middle, snuggled happily against him, but now I craned my head back around for another look at his face. “Once the baby comes, we’re not gonna have all this time to sit around watching tv and sneaking off for back rubs, are we. It’ll be midnight feedings and changing diapers and stuff.”

“Sure we will!” I winked at him. “Horace can change the diapers.”

Stan laughed. “That poor kid. What’re we gonna do about him, Teegs?”

“What _can_ we do?” I sighed, then sat up a little straighter and repeated the question. “Wait a minute. What _can_ we do?” I’d been operating for the past year under the assumption that Horace’s condition was something permanent. Even in Gravity Falls, you don’t hear about a lot of people coming back from the dead. Maybe it would have been different if I’d known him when he was alive, but he’d met his end long before even Stan was born. It was nice, having one kid in the house who didn’t emit weird smells or create laundry or eat half the food in the fridge overnight. It simply hadn’t _occurred_ to me to look for a solution.

Why the issue chose this moment to assert itself in my mind, I had no idea. It had probably been rolling around in there since the announcement a few weeks back, biding its time and waiting for its moment. Well, apparently my stupid joke and Stan’s question were the moment it had been waiting for. What _were_ we going to do about Horace?

My response caught Stan off-guard—I could feel the slight muscular shift through his shoulders that translated to surprise or tension. “I dunno. Uh…don’t make him change diapers, I guess? Or you mean cause he keeps getting stronger?” He chuckled to himself. “You worried he’s actually gonna start using up all the hot water for showers like Dave, or leaving candy wrappers all over the house like Nicky?”

I was already shaking my head. I shifted my position yet again, sitting up next to him on the swing. “I’m not _worried_ about that. I _want_ that! What if there was a way to help him get there?”

“Get where? What’re we talking about here?” He looked confused, maybe a little concerned, but before I could answer the lightbulb went on over his head. “You wanna make him a real boy.”

“Well, why not?” I crossed my arms defiantly. “I should have thought of it ages ago, I’m a terrible mother.”

“You’re _not_ a terrible mother.”

I ignored him. “This is Gravity Falls, Weirdness Central for the world! If there’s a way to give his life back to him, this is the place to do it, right?”

Stan looked profoundly uncomfortable. “Teegs, sweetie, he’s _dead_. You can’t just undo that.” He eyed me suspiciously. “You’re planning something, aren’t you. You’re gonna, I dunno, use that thing to go back in time and save his life or something.”

And I hadn’t even thought of _that_. I really _was_ a terrible mother! “I don’t think so.” I mulled it over, though. “No, saving his life back in 1921 would change too much. Think of all the people whose lives he’d have influenced! It’s not like you and me, where it was contained.” I shook my head. “If I pushed him out of the way of that car, the time police or whoever would be on my back in no time.”

He grunted in response, clearly thinking it over himself. “I’m glad you’re being smart,” he said at last. “I love the kid, too, but I don’t want you messing—”

“Ford would know!” I exclaimed, standing up so quickly that the swing bonked me in the back of the knees, making me fall back onto it. Instead of attempting it again, I swiveled excitedly toward Stan. “He knows more about this area and the paranormal than anyone! And if _he_ doesn’t know, maybe someone from those men in black he works with does!”

“Wait a minute! You’re talking about asking a bunch of government suits how to bring a dead kid from a hundred years ago back to life?” He was trying to make it sound laughable. I was having none of it.

“No,” I told him firmly, “I’m talking about asking my brother in law to help me find a way to cure my child’s disability.”

“Disability,” Stan repeated me.

I shot him a look. “Don’t take that tone! He is _family_ , Stan, you said so yourself. And he thinks he’s going to have to sit here and watch everyone grow and age and leave. I promised him we wouldn’t, but you know that’s impossible. I can’t keep Nick and Dave here forever, and you and I definitely won’t be around in another fifty years. He’s so close to human already, even Ford was impressed. It’s a disability.”

“Whatcha gonna call it, _breathing impaired_?”

“Why are you so against this?”

We stared each other down for a few seconds, then he shrugged. “Life and death’s big stuff, sweetie. I wanna help him, but I don’t know if that’s something we should mess with. Sounds…risky.”

“Risky.” I raised my eyebrows. “ _Risky,_ Stan? Your whole _life_ has been risky! You’re legally dead, remember? You opened an inter-dimensional portal! We broke into a museum for a date! We’ve had sex practically in public! Who are you to lecture me about risk?”

“Cause I’ve almost lost you too many times!” he shot back, stopping me in my tracks. “When you disappeared last month it just about killed me. Now you wanna mess around with this crap…” He shook his head. “It’d be pushing your luck too far.”

Funny that he’d mention luck. It derailed my frustration, taking me back to my thoughts from earlier tonight. My luck had been _so_ good lately. Maybe he was right, maybe it’d be a mistake to test it any further. Most of the remaining fight went out of me.

“At least let me _ask_ Ford,” I pressed. “There’s no harm in _asking_ , is there?”

“Fine,” he said reluctantly. “If it means so much to you.”

I smiled. “Deal.”

He looked relieved. I smiled wider and scooted in close enough to kiss him. When I finally removed my lips from his, he seemed almost relaxed again. “So what about _my_ question, huh?”

“What question was that?” I honestly couldn’t remember.

Stan laughed softly at the back of his throat. “Guess I never asked it. I was talking about you and me. Enjoying ourselves when we still can.”

“Oh.” A smile tugged at my lips. “You wanna go inside for a ‘back rub?’”

At that, he grinned. “Nah. I mean, _yeah_ , but that’s not what I was asking. We always talked about taking a vacation. We oughta do it.”

I blinked. “Now?”

“Well not _now_. Maybe in a few weeks. Once everyone’s settled into school and the summer crowds die down at the Shack. Before you start looking all pregnant.”

Eloquent as always, that was my Stan. I kissed him again, lightly this time. “What do you have in mind?”

He hesitated. “Vegas?”

I should have seen that coming. “Aw come on, you want to take me to Vegas when I can’t _drink_?”

“Hey, _you_ said you wanted to go!”

“I said that last fall when we were both drunk and you were trying to get me to take a midnight trip to Atlantic City!” I immediately regretted the objection and walked it back. “Sorry. Knee-jerk reaction. I don’t actually have a problem with Vegas. It just seems like the sort of place you should be able to drink at.”

He appeared mollified by my quick apology. “It is. But there’s plenty of other stuff to do. And you gotta see it, Teegs. All the lights and smells, all the money…it’s beautiful. If this is our best chance, we need to do it.”

“You just want to spend all the money from your dad’s estate,” I remarked playfully.

“To _make more_ ,” he reminded me, wagging a finger. “Don’t underestimate me, sweetheart.”

“I would never.”

“Good.”

I kissed him again; third time’s a charm. “I’ll look into hotel prices and stuff next time things are slow at work.”

“So Monday, then?”

“Ha ha ha.” I returned blandly, but I smiled. It wasn’t _his_ fault my job was dull. “Yes, probably. So, what? A long weekend? End of September?”

“Whatever suits you best,” he said magnanimously.


	6. Chapter 6

I was still barely pregnant when we landed at McCarran International Airport four weeks later. My favorite jeans were now too tight, which I was slightly bitter about, but if you didn’t know about that you certainly wouldn’t have known it to look at me. What nausea there had been was mostly over; I’d just reached the victory mark of surviving the first trimester earlier that week. Nothing was moving around in there—or rather, it probably _was_ , but nothing I could feel yet. My sex drive was still alive and well, and I was looking forward to the vacation even if I couldn’t imbibe.

I had a simple champagne-colored cocktail dress in our small suitcase along with khaki shorts, a black blouse, and some interesting lingerie. If we spent the whole weekend in the hotel room watching tv, ordering room service, and having sex, that was just fine with me. But I knew Stan would want to go out. For someone who scolded me about running out my good fortune this year, he sure seemed eager to take some risks himself.

Our hotel wasn’t one of the iconic ones, but it was still pretty nice by my standards. And we’d gotten a remarkably good rate on our three-night stay—so good that the lady who’d checked us in had stopped to double-check the number in disbelief. Stan had been very smug about it, even though I’d been the one to make the reservation. We’d been traveling for most of the day, so all I wanted to do was stretch out on the big soft bed. Maybe take a nice hot shower to soothe my muscles, then persuade Stan to help me dry off. A visit to a hot tub or sauna would have been even better, but that was ill advised in my present condition. I scowled at my abdomen as I rolled my tight shoulders against the mattress.

“Teegs!” Stan’s voice beckoned me from the bathroom. “You’ve gotta see this!”

“Pass,” I muttered. I liked seeing him naked, and I was fine with watching him shave or take his dentures out. I didn’t particularly want to see anything else he did in the bathroom.

He appeared back in the main part of the room, fully clothed, hands on his hips. “Seriously?”

It drew a low laugh out of me, and I pushed myself up on my elbows. “Why, what is it?”

“The size of the _shower_ in here!” He went back in to admire it some more.

I hauled myself up, mentally arguing that if a guy with two decades on me still had this kind of energy after a day of travel, I had no excuse. “I thought you’d been to Vegas before,” I protested as I crossed the room. “How are you still this impressed by—” I stopped dead and stared at the shower. I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life. Marble. Glass. Big enough to comfortably fit three people. Not that I wanted to put three people in it. Two would do just fine.

Stan looked smug. “I didn’t stay _here_ last time, sweetie. I slept in my car. A parking spot alone cost me money!”

Just _thinking_ about sleeping in a car—even the El Diablo with its big bench seats—was enough to make me cringe. I rolled my shoulders again, then arched my back as I stretched my arms out behind me. My gaze continued to travel the luxurious bathroom. Towels, plusher and more perfectly white than I would have thought could exist. The grey and black marble theme continued through the floors and counters, too pristine to be believed. An enormous mirror by an elegant sink. Even the _toilet_ looked fancy to my eyes.

“They give us bath robes?” I gasped, passing Stan to touch one of the fluffy garments hanging from hooks near the door. “This is insane!”

Stan continued to look smug, presumably over convincing me to come take a look. I walked into his personal space, wrapped my arms around the back of his neck, and wiped that superior smirk off his face by pushing my tongue into his mouth.

We’d shared enough kisses by this point in our relationship that this one shouldn’t have taken my breath away. But that’s the wonderful thing about being in love—no matter how many times you do that sort of thing, it _still_ takes your breath away. Especially when he returned it with fervor, immediately putting both hands on my butt and pulling me in close. I whined faintly in the back of my throat and started undoing buttons on his shirt. “Let’s try out the shower.” He nodded. I stripped off my shirt and (not my favorite) jeans before reaching into the shower to turn the water on. Didn’t want it to be freezing cold when we got in, after all.

A mist of water clung to my arm when I retracted it, making me shiver slightly. I didn’t let that stop me from shedding my bra and stepping out of my panties. My nipples hardened with the cool air. I decided I liked it, and reached back into the shower for a handful of cold water. It only amounted to a teaspoon or two, but watching Stan’s face as I drizzled it over my bare breasts was worth the shock of cold. Now my nipples were hard enough to ache, but I took my time, wiping my wet hand from my cleavage to my crotch.

I’d been intending to step coyly back into Stan’s arms after that, but he came to me. My hand had barely passed my stomach when his hands gripped me. The sudden heat from him created a fresh contrast to the cold, and my breath caught. He cupped one breast, rubbing his thumb back and forth over the nipple, as he lowered his mouth to the other. Another little, inarticulate sound escaped me, and my knees weakened significantly. He hadn’t even finished getting undressed yet; the last button of his Hawaiian-print shirt was still fastened, and the front of his boxers was sticking straight out like a tent. I shoved them out of the way and wrapped my hand around him.

It was all I could do to stay standing and move my hand gently back and forth as he continued to work over my breasts. I needed something for support, but I wasn’t close enough to any walls, the backs of his shoulders would have to do. I gripped them as my legs trembled, nerve endings sending urgent messages from my chest down into my groin about what was supposed to happen next. My head tipped back, my hips pressed forward, I forgot all about the tension in my back. “Stan,” my lips mouthed silently, and then he brought his other hand up between my legs, sliding his fingers into me, and I came.

As soon as he was sure he’d accomplished that, he removed his hand and let me collapse onto the cold marble floor. Breathing still uneven, I turned my attention to getting that last button of his shirt undone. I kissed the inside of his thigh while I was in the area. He helped me up, and I yanked open the shower door. The water cascading down was somewhere between warm and hot. Absolutely perfect.

Stan pushed me up against one of the beautiful glass walls, water falling all around us, and slid two fingers back into me. I groaned, running my hands up and down his back and sides and butt as the water coursed down. His hair was getting wet. He still had his glasses on. Silly man. I would have removed them for him, but I was held completely captive by the level of bliss his fingers were creating. I groaned again, heroically bringing my hands up into his wet hair and attempting to stand up tall enough to kiss him. He added a finger, and I wound up making a deep, guttural sound against the side of his neck.

He sat back on the floor of the shower, pulling me down with him. On top of him. The shower was big enough for him to lie down on, if he bent his knees a little. The second he removed his hand, I found something to take its place. This position put me right in the middle of the shower, water soaking my hair and streaming down in rivulets all over me. Stan removed his wet glasses and set them to the side, eyes on me through the entire movement, so I assumed I made for a pretty good view.

So did he. I’d always loved the brown hue of his eyes, much clearer with the glasses removed. His lips were parted ever so slightly in excitement. The hair on his chest and shoulders was flattened and darkened by the shower. I leaned backward, arching nearly into a bow, letting my hips rotate up and down in poorly contained enthusiasm. His hands fit perfectly at the small of my back, and he fit perfectly inside me. I moaned, louder, sitting upright again to run my hands over his chest, forcing my rocking hips into a quick rhythm.

Stan came first, but I _felt_ it, the spasm sending off an answering shock wave through my own body. I nearly shouted, the drumming of the water around us muting the sound. Shuddering with pleasure, I relaxed against his chest, kissing his skin despite the streams of water that tried to sneak between my lips.

He regained the power of speech first. “So you like the hotel, huh?”

I laughed, though some residual moan crept into it. “I’m willing to admit this trip might have been a good idea.”

“ _Mighta_?” he demanded, which made me laugh more.

“Fine,” I conceded, “I like it. This is wonderful. Want to go try out those fluffy robes now?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“And order room service?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“And turn on the tv?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“And then take another shower?”

He started to laugh, too. “If that’s what you want, sweetie. But tomorrow, we’re hitting the floors.”

*

I had pan-roasted salmon while in my fluffy white bath robe. I had key lime pie for dessert. I watched a bad movie with far too many commercials that made Stan laugh. I slept, naked under the silky sheets of the giant bed, curled against him. We slept late the next morning, and after starting the day by making love, I took a delightfully hot shower all by myself. After which we ordered waffles (with strawberries and whipped cream) and a giant serving of bacon delivered to our room along with our coffee.

This was the best vacation ever.

It wasn’t until early afternoon that we put on real clothes and headed out to take a look at the city. Even then, it wasn’t really sightseeing. We strolled down the strip, enjoying the scorching heat of midday Las Vegas and admiring the facades of the fancier hotels and shops. I’d known this place would be bustling, exciting, even ostentatious, but I hadn’t bargained for just how much _variety_ there would be. In the space of a few blocks, I saw a pirate attack, a volcanic eruption, a gondolier singing straight out of an Italian opera, and the most ridiculously complicated fountain I’d ever seen. And the people! I’d gotten used to the whiteness of Oregon, but here I saw different skin tones, ages, body types, fashion sense, everywhere I looked. Multiple languages filled the oppressively hot air around us, too. I could pick out plenty of Spanish and some bits of French, but I was also pretty sure I heard Italian, German, and several Asian sounding languages I couldn’t identify well enough to name. When I looked up, I caught sight of a figure ziplining down the street overhead. Phones—as well as real, professional cameras—were snapping away all over.

Stan seemed completely blasé about all of it, navigating between throngs of tourists as if it was an average Thursday evening back home. I almost lost him once, when I paused to gawk. “Is it always like this?” I asked in awe when I caught up, slipping my hand into his so we didn’t get separated again.

“Nah.” He used our joined hands to tug me quickly to the side, out of the way of a gaggle of loudly dressed elderly Japanese men. “Sometimes it gets busy.”

When the heat started to get to us, we found a place for a drink of water and some ice cream before heading back to the hotel for our swimsuits. The next two hours were spent sipping margaritas (virgin, in my case) and dipping our extremities in the pool there. It wasn’t as fancy as some, and Stan wasn’t a huge fan of public pools, but soaking up sun beside the water while getting pleasantly inebriated suited him just fine.

At 4:00 I had scheduled us an in-depth massage experience at one of the local spas. Stan had resisted the idea at first, but he certainly wasn’t complaining by the time the masseuse got done with him. If his had been anything like mine, I wasn’t surprised—I couldn’t think of the last time my muscles had felt this relaxed or my body this in tune with itself. After that we got dinner at the Heart Attack Grill. I’d read about the place and knew it wasn’t the healthiest choice, sure, but we were on _vacation_. And any guilt I may have felt about leading Stan to a place with something called the “Double Bypass Burger” was overridden by the look of pure joy on his face.

We had to return to the hotel after dinner for an hour of lying around groaning that we’d overdone it. When we felt able to walk again—or rather, when I felt like I might be able to put on cute cocktail dress without doing it a huge disservice—we got changed and rubbed a bunch of special glow-concealing lotion into every exposed inch of my skin. Then I let Stan lead me to the nearest casino floor.

He started slow, with some slot machines. Mostly, I suspected, because I’d mentioned never having tried them. They must have been rigged to suck you in, somehow; the first time I pushed the button like Stan showed me, three lemons lined up and a little slip came out telling me I’d won ten dollars. I hadn’t expected to like gambling, really—the potential loss of money made me nervous. I was just here to humor Stan, and because I trusted him enough to believe he wasn’t going to throw away all his savings. But seeing that fruit line up made me feel like I’d actually _accomplished_ something with my stupid little win. The surge of excitement and victory that went with that felt damn good. The impressed look on Stan’s face didn’t hurt any, either.

I tried another one, just one more, then I’d hand the machine over to Stan. This time I put in a little more money and got three bunches of grapes for my trouble. Another little receipt telling me I’d won money. Not a lot, sure, but more than I’d put in. I beamed at my boyfriend’s suspicious expression. “Guess I’m lucky tonight?”

“I’ll say you are,” he agreed, looking as if he was trying to figure out how I’d gamed the system. Last time I’d seen that expression on him, I’d been beating him at poker. “Double or nothing you can’t do it again, sweetie.”

I laughed. “You’re betting against me? We live together, my money is your money! That’s just fiscal masturbation.”

“Hey, what? Don’t do _that_ in here, you’re gonna get us kicked—”

I crossed my arms over my chest and raised an eyebrow. “We’re not even gonna talk about you failing to recognize the word _fiscal_ , we’re jumping straight to _why_ you know masturbating in a casino will get you kicked out.”

He paused for a second and then laughed. “It wasn’t _me_ , sweetie!”

I continued to raise my eyebrow at him. A smirk edged its way onto my face.

Stan spread his hands defensively. “Seriously! I saw a guy, when I was out here a couple years ago. He was pretty tanked. You shoulda seen the way security moved in on him!”

I allowed the smirk to spread and uncrossed my arms. I hadn’t _really_ thought he’d been talking about himself, and depending on the actual circumstances I wasn’t sure I would have been that horrified even so. But you didn’t just let a comment like that pass without asking. I jerked my head up and down once. “Okay. I believe you were issuing a challenge?”

He widened his stance and lifted his chin. “Yeah. Do it again. Bet you can’t.”

Privately, I bet I couldn’t, either. But the adrenaline from those last two little wins made it hard to surrender. “Bet you the first month of dirty diapers that I can.”

“Dirty diapers? That’s the best you got? You’re on.”

The poor man had no idea what he was betting. It was probably just as well that I was going to lose this one. Ease him into the whole parenting thing _slowly_.

I punched some more digits into the machine and got ready to hit that button again. Okay, I’d do it…now. Yep. There we go.

I won two and a half thousand dollars.

I let out an excited shriek that would have done Mabel proud. Stan’s jaw dropped and he put out a hand on the nearest machine to steady himself. I let out a laugh that was slightly hysterical and flung my arms around him. “That was _insane_!” I exclaimed shrilly.

“Okay, okay, keep it down,” he told me, reclaiming his senses enough to pat me on the shoulder. He let out a long, low whistle and eyed me shrewdly. “You really didn’t expect that! You got no clue what you’re doing, do you?”

“What gave me away?” I laughed, still feeling like an overwound clock. “A month of diapers! Babies poop _all the time_ in the first month, Stan!” I pumped my fist exuberantly. “I am on _fire_ tonight!” Huh, that wasn’t normally something I’d get excited about.

He flashed me a bemused grin and took the receipt from the machine. “Damn, Teegs. You been taking lucky pills or something?” I giggled and shook my head. “For twenty-five hundred bucks, I can handle a few diapers!” He put his hands on my shoulders and turned me back toward the machine. “Do it again!”

My giggles subsided as I shook my head. “Honey, I don’t think I can…”

“Sure you can.” His pitch dropped, lending a smooth and seductive edge to his voice. “Like you said, you’re on fire tonight! Do another max bet.”

At this point, I didn’t see any reason not to. At worst, I’d lose a tenth of the money I’d just won. At best…

I made the bet and hit the button. Not as much as last time, but certainly nothing to sneeze at, either—a little over a thousand dollars. I turned and gaped at Stan. He gaped back at me. We both looked back at the machine, just to be sure, and gaped at that for a little bit.

“Move over, sweetie. I gotta try.” Stan shoved me gently to the side, taking over my machine. “Let’s see if it’s a fluke.” I leaned over his shoulder, fabric of my cute dress pressed against his back, as he hit the buttons himself this time. Eight hundred dollars.

I wrapped my arms around his shoulders from behind, squeezing him in a backward hug of congratulations. “Holy _shit_ , what’d we just…” I tried to do quick mental math. Eight hundred plus twelve hundred plus twenty-five hundred plus…

“Four thousand, five hundred and forty big ones,” he told me without missing a beat as he stood up. “Not too bad for five minutes!”

I was astounded. “There’s no way we can keep this up, though!”

“Well I’m sure not quitting this early in the night,” he assured me, punctuating it with a light, cheerful slap on my butt. “I’ve barely spent anything, and I haven’t had a chance to show off my hot girlfriend!”

Pretending to be embarrassed by this description, I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I’m sure everyone’s super impressed by the old pregnant lady.”

“They will be if you keep winning like this,” he retorted happily. “Here, listen, I’m gonna hit the blackjack table for a few. You want some real excitement? Go put a couple chips down on the zeros in roulette.”

I jiggled my head side to side, moving closer to him. I was having fun, but I wasn’t quite ready to break out on my own yet. Just walking up to a roulette table and placing a bet sounded daunting. “You can’t show me off if I don’t stick with you,” I pointed out.

Stan beamed and offered me his arm. “Come on then, lemme show you what _real_ money looks like.”

He escorted me over to the Blackjack table, where we took up a place next to a wizened little old man who must have been a hundred if he was a day. We just watched in silence for a minute. Stan was focused on the game being played, the dealer, the other people; I was focusing on Stan. His face was still, but his eyes were bright and active. I didn’t know how he could possibly cheat and get away with it in a place like this, but he probably knew a few tricks he’d never let me in on.

Five minutes later, we were still standing around watching, and I was starting to regret the heels I’d chosen to go with my dress. I was also rethinking those two poolside margaritas and the three glasses of water I’d had at dinner. Even _without_ a plum-sized little guy putting extra pressure on my bladder, that would have translated for a need to find the ladies’ room. I shifted my weight back and forth for a minute, but when Stan’s eyes remained thoughtfully on the dealer I leaned over and brushed a kiss on his shoulder. “I need to pee,” I said quietly into his ear. “Before I explode. I’ll be back, okay?”

He nodded, flashing me a brief, broad smile without even really seeing me, and returned his attention to the table. I nodded and hurried off toward the nearest restroom. It took me a minute to find one, and by the time I did things were pretty dire in the holding-it department. I did not need pee in my nylons or a wet spot on my dress. Ugh. I wrestled my pantyhose down in the nick of time and sighed in relief. Hopefully, I thought, standing up quickly before it automatically flushed, by the time I got back there Stan would be _doing_ something. Without understanding the science of the game or using any money, gambling could be pretty boring.

Maybe because the adrenaline of winning had worn off slightly, maybe because I was dreading the idea that I might come back to find Stan _still_ just watching, but I took my time on my return stroll. I paused to people-watch, because the diverse crowds from outside populated this place, too. Some of them were clearly gambling addicts, some were clearly here for high-stakes excitement, and some were just as clearly tourists like me. I stopped just long enough to see a handful of bets placed at a few different tables. It was amazing, how many different types of games were going on in a place like this!

I wasn’t really paying attention to most of the conversations, just watching chips get shoved around, and most of the gambling jargon went way over my head anyway. But I definitely heard someone behind me say something about a “street,” and I turned to see I’d wound up near the roulette table after all. It was already pretty crowded, but a young couple shifted to make room for me. I watched the professional spin the wheel and throw the ball, and I cocked my head to the side as I observed it bouncing around before finally settling in the slot next to 18. A tiny little Asian woman opposite me smiled slightly, and I saw a definite lip curl on the face of a long-haired man near her, but there were no dramatic reactions. Certainly nothing like my undignified shriek at the slots earlier. Maybe where real money was on the line, emotions stayed under wraps.

A few chips got shoved around. Someone said “let it ride” like in a movie, and I had to work hard to not grin delightedly. A few more people placed new bets. I remembered Stan telling me to throw a “couple of chips down on the zeros” and decided hey, what the hell. Before I could chicken out, I grabbed a few chips from my bag and nervously bet them on 00. The guy who had curled his lip earlier raised an eyebrow at me, but no one said anything. This was a weird form of entertainment.

But I couldn’t deny the warring tension and excitement inside me when they threw the ball on the wheel. Watching it spin and bounce, the possibility that it might, somehow, land on that green square…my heart was racing as the wheel slowed.

It was _close_ to my square! Holy shit holy shit holy shit. I clutched the edge of the table for dear life, leaning over and staring eagerly. It was going to stop too soon—no it wasn’t—yes it was—holy shit—

It stopped on 00.

I managed to stop my jaw from dropping, but I know my lips parted in surprise. I could feel a few people looking at me, now, and I smiled wanly. The man running the table inclined his head slightly to me in acknowledgement. I tried to look cool and indifferent; obviously the odds hadn’t been in my favor, but I didn’t even know how much I’d really bet, let alone how much I’d just _won_.

Clearly, I was supposed to do _something,_ though. The guy who’d been sneering earlier was looking with something close to admiration, and even the little old lady was showing polite interest. What did I do, what did I do?

I pulled in a nice, deep, slow breath through my nose and leaned one elbow casually on the table. And I said the only thing I could think of.

“Let it ride.”

*

Stan was still at the blackjack table when I made it back. _That_ was a relief. I didn’t think my nerves could handle trying to hunt him down on top of everything right now. I was also pleased to see that he was actually playing. He had a few cards lying face-up in front of him. I wordlessly touched his elbow to let him know I was there before looking around the table with interest. I had only a vague understanding of how this game was played—namely that going over 21 was bad—but I wondered whether I’d somehow pull out a win if I decided to play a hand. After everything else tonight, it seemed likely.

There were a lot of small-numbered cards on the table. Stan had two twos, a four, and a three. I watched him shake his head at the dealer, who stoically announced “Player stands” before flipping the next card. A nine. “Dealer busts,” she said, showing a hand that added up to…I did quick mental math…24. The old man at the end of the table took another card, but wound up with a 22. He scowled and said something. I didn’t understand the language, but I knew a sullen grumble when I heard one. I looked from Stan to his cards and back again, waiting to see what he’d do. He flipped the last card in front of him, which turned out to be a five. “Sixteen takes it,” the dealer said blandly, and my boyfriend smirked. I wondered how much he’d just scored.

“You’re back!” He slipped an arm possessively around my waist, pulling me up against him, and let his satisfied smirk turn into a brilliant Stan Pines grin. “Bout time, I thought you got lost!”

I snorted and shook my head. “No you didn’t. You would have torn the place apart if you thought I was lost.”

He chuckled. “I woulda torn the place apart if I thought you were in _trouble_. Your sense of direction’s not the best, sweetheart.”

He had me there. I made a face at him before tipping my head to indicate the table. “Looks like congratulations are in order!”

“Not yet, I’m still playing.” He bobbed his head to the dealer as she prepared to start up a new game. “You didn’t pass roulette on the way back, did you? There was some big fuss over there a minute ago. Cheering and everything. I saw a bunch of pit bosses head over!”

I had no idea what a pit boss was, but that wasn’t my primary concern right now. I felt the heat rush to my cheeks, as abruptly uncomfortable as if I’d done something wrong. “I think, uh…that might’ve been me.”

Stan stopped dead and turned his full attention on me. I felt like I was caught in a set of headlights. “What?”

I gulped. “You told me to play double zeros, so I did. And it won, and I didn’t know what else to do, so I said, you know, let it ride. Because it sounded cool and everyone was looking at me! And, um.” My throat felt very tight. Was it hot in here? “It came up double-zeros again. Everyone clapped, it was really sweet! But then some big guys in dark suits started sort of scoping me out, so I cashed out as quick as I could and came to find you.” I looked nervously over my shoulder, where I could still see one of them watching me.

The dealer was looking at Stan expectantly. He flapped his hand at her, turning his back on whatever chips he’d been prepared to bet, and put his hands on my shoulders. “Teagan,” he said, tone surprisingly calm and gentle, “how much did you win?”

_My_ voice didn’t sound calm at all. It was half an octave higher than usual. “A hundred and twenty thousand dollars.”

I could actually see the color drain out of his face. Suddenly his hands weren’t on my shoulders to reassure me, but to support himself. He whistled softly, eyes wide behind his glasses. “A hundred and…? Sweetie, you won an eighth of a _mil?_ ”

I spread my hands and shrugged. “I guess so?”

He straightened back up, delight overtaking the shock, and followed my gaze to one of the security guard types hovering nearby. He nodded as if that confirmed it, and put a guiding hand on my elbow. “We’re getting outta here before the bosses comes by with awkward questions. Come on.”

I went along without complaint, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other. None of this felt real or even _possible_. I lived in Gravity Falls, and yet this genuinely felt like the least plausible thing to ever happen to me.

“Why do we need to avoid questions?” I asked as we threaded our way through a group of German tourists. “I wasn’t cheating!”

Stan shot me a look that said that he pitied my innocence. Right. Of course. _I_ hadn’t been cheating.

“Where are we going now?” I asked instead. “Back to the room?”

At that he laughed, and circled his arm around my waist. “You joking? We’re on to the Bellagio, Teegs! I’m taking you to the big leagues while you’re this hot!”

I nearly stopped walking. “Are you serious? An eighth of a million dollars, and you don’t want to quit while we’re ahead?”

He stopped, looked around, and walked me over to an empty stretch of wall where we could talk. “Listen, sweetie,” he said, voice pitched low, leaning down so his eyes were close to mine. “I dunno what’s going on tonight. But luck is sticking to you like gum on a shoe, and I’m not gonna sit around trying to figure out why. I’m gonna push it as far as I can while it lasts!” His eyes took on an expression of concern. “You’re alright, aren’t you?”

I had no idea whether or not I was alright. I nodded anyway.

Stan beamed and clapped me on the shoulder. “Good! You thought our bathroom was nice? You’re gonna _love_ the Bellagio.”

*

He was right about the Bellagio. Holy shit. Before we even went inside the place, we stopped in front of the giant building to watch its elaborate fountain synchronize lights and water jets to music. I stood in awe, leaning back into Stan as he stood behind me with his arms encircling my stomach, wondering how much work it took to make water do _that_. Halfway through, I turned my head around and up, and started kissing him. That got uncomfortable, so I turned in his arms to do it better. Kissing in front of a magical fountain in Las Vegas. I was so glad I’d let him talk me into vacationing here.

When the show ended, we walked the remaining distance to the casino hand in hand. “How’s Little Pines doing?” he asked after a few dozen yards of comfortable silence. “This isn’t too much for him?”

“Kettle-Pines,” I corrected him. “We really ought to come up with a _first_ name, you know.”

Stan shook his head stubbornly. “I’m not gonna jinx it. You don’t name ‘em till they’re born.”

I didn’t feel like fighting him on that right now. “He’s doing just fine, as far as I can tell. No clue that anything exciting is happening outside of his warm, dark little world.”

“And you? How’s my Teegs feel about all this excitement?”

“I’m not sure,” I half-laughed. “I liked the fountain. I loved today. But the money thing…” I shook my head, still stalling out on that point. “Maybe the baby’s the lucky one.”

“Huh?” There was a snappy alertness to the syllable that caught me off guard, and his pace slowed.

The heels were killing my feet, so it was a relief to drop back and match his slower stride. “You know. Because he has no clue what’s going on out here. That we just won enough money to buy Dave his own car ten times over.”

Stan stopped walking altogether. “How do we know he’s _not?_ ”

“Not what?” I was surprised that he hadn’t complained about me theoretically spending that much of our earnings on Dave, honestly.

“Think about it,” he told me earnestly. “I told you a while back you’d been pushing your luck, right? When we were talking about Horace. And then with the baby. It feels like everything’s been too easy, you know?”

I nodded at once, since I’d been having the same feeling for weeks. “Kiddo’s doing just fine despite all the odds. We didn’t accidentally destroy the world. The kids never found the time tape. We got all your memories back.”

“And last week, how Clara told you about that job,” he reminded me. My friend Clara had indeed heard through the grapevine that the aging secretary at one of the local elementary schools was retiring at the end of the year. I’d already made overtures to the principal there. Nothing was set in stone yet, but I had a very good feeling about my chances when they started looking for a replacement next summer.

“And that new pricing you got from the merch supplier,” I agreed, finally articulating the things I hadn’t quite been thinking for the past two months. “And Nicky getting all the classes he wanted, even though he’s a freshman.” And the rate we’d gotten on the hotel. And the fact that I hadn’t gotten a single red light in ages.

Stan was still nodding eagerly. “And tonight!” He surprised me by reaching out and placing a palm on my almost imperceptible bump. “ _Something’s_ gotta be giving us luck, sweetie. And when did it all start?”

I stared down at his hand, wide fingers spread out to cover as much of my abdomen as possible. No way. But the timing was absolutely correct. I exhaled harshly through my nose in an emotion I couldn’t describe. “Are you my little good luck charm?” I asked quietly, settling my hand on top of Stan’s.

Naturally, I got no answer.

I looked up into Stan’s eyes, protesting weakly, “It doesn’t make any sense.”

If I was having doubts, my boyfriend looked like he could conquer the world right now. “I knocked you up twenty-six years ago, and you’re due this April. In this case, looking for sense is the crazy choice.”

“I…guess I can’t argue with that,” I said weakly.

He grinned. “You know what _else_ can’t argue with that?”

Raising my eyebrows, I smirked. “An eighth of a million dollars?”

“An eighth of a million dollars!”

I laughed and looked down at my little bump again. “Guess baby wants to have his own bedroom! Think we can pull off a remodel in the next six months?”

He finally took his hand back, using it to aim a finger-gun at me. “Ask me again in a couple hours. Let’s see how much more money we can rake in!”

*

The inside of the casino was just as sumptuous as the exterior had led me to believe. It was so plush and elaborate, I felt like I’d wandered into a palace or something. There was even real artwork hanging from the walls; I wondered if the Picasso we’d just walked past was genuine, or simply a good reprint.

This time we skipped the slot machines altogether, getting our chips and heading straight to the tables. Stan said he wanted to try “rolling the bones” and escorted me to the craps table. Just like with blackjack, he wanted to watch the other players for a few minutes before jumping into the fray. I got bored and texted a few pictures of the Strip to my boys back home, but put my phone away when Stan put down some purple chips and loudly bet on “eight the hard way,” whatever that meant. He wasn’t even the one rolling!

He did, however, find something to do with his hands. He clapped one of them back over my stomach, making me blush, and didn’t bother to lower his voice when he said “Come on baby, give your daddy some luck!”

The dice on the table came up as two fours. That meant nothing to me except that it totaled eight, but Stan’s sharp cackle of delighted disbelief told me the rest of what I needed to know.

When it was his chance to roll, he did it with one hand still flat against my stomach. I was starting to feel weirdly objectified, but I couldn’t argue with the results. He was raking in chips at every turn. I didn’t have the faintest clue how much it added up to. Stan was clearly _trying_ to play it cool and calm. Luck wasn’t helping him in that regard, though. “I’m not even cheating!” he exclaimed to me loudly as the other players scowled.

I quietly suggested at that point that it might be time to cash out.

Now that he thought he knew the ticket to success, though, it was hard to get him out of there. I dragged him away from the dice table alright, but less than a minute later he stopped to take another shot at blackjack. This time he kept me firmly by his side. When I tried to point out the man in casino dress who had followed us over from the craps table to continue silently watching us, Stan shrugged it off with good humor. “We’ve got luck on our side, sweetheart! They’ve got nothing on me!”

If he’d let me off to admire the artwork or just play a few slots on my own, I wouldn’t have minded so much. But he seemed to have decided his odds at winning had a direct correlation to my proximity, so I was stuck standing there at the table with him as the minutes ticked slowly by. Oh well, at least I learned all the rules of blackjack. I was figuring out how to mentally translate all the chips into a real-world number, too. If my calculations were right, in the past couple hours he’d won more than half of what I’d made in roulette.

My feet were _killing_ me. I said fuck it and pulled the shoes off. Unfortunately, doing that convinced my body it was okay to start relaxing. I found myself nodding off while still standing up, leaning against Stan’s shoulder. He was completely oblivious.

“Stan,” I mumbled into his ear, “can we _go_ yet? I’m tired.”

“Few more minutes, sweetie,” he said without even looking.

Five minutes later, I tried again. “Hang on, Teegs, I’m on a roll here!”

“Of _course_ you’re on a roll,” I nearly snarled, “you’ve been on a roll all night, and if you’re right about the source of the luck you’re going to _keep_ being on a roll. So can we call it a day? Please?”

“Okay, sweetie. One more hand.”

I let him play one more hand, because I loved him. I spent most of it with my eyes closed and my head propped on his shoulder. I only opened them when I heard the chips getting pushed across the table toward us. “ _Now_?”

“One more hand,” he brushed me off.

I grabbed his collar. “Listen here,” I hissed furiously, “you do not _need_ any more money. What you _do_ need is to get me back the hotel before I literally pass out here on the casino floor. Or would you just rest your foot on my stomach for luck, and keep playing _then_ , too?”

That got through, at least. He really looked at me, taking in eyes that I’m sure were flashing angrily. His eyes flickered down to my exhausted posture, the time on his watch, and my shoeless feet. “Crap.”

“Yeah,” I agreed tartly.

To his credit, he cashed out immediately. “Sorry,” he said, not quite meeting my eyes.

“Just get me home,” I yawned.

“Home?” he repeated doubtfully.

I swallowed another yawn. “The room. I’m dead on my feet.”

“Can’t we just stop at the roulette table on the way o—” He stopped with a grimace when he got a look at my face. “Okay, fine, let’s get outta here.”

I drowsed on his shoulder through the entire cab ride to the hotel, and was barely coherent on the elevator ride up to our room. I might as well have been drunk! I left my dress and nylons in a pile on the floor and fell straight into the bed. My last clear memory was of Stan making lists of the things he planned to do with all his money.

*

At the end of the day, we’d made a little under two hundred thousand dollars that night. We’d spent hardly any of Stan’s inheritance from last year doing it. And we still had one more day in Vegas. Stan didn’t dare wake me up, but he did order me a nice brunch when I finally came to. It arrived about five minutes after I finished drying off from my shower. An omelet this time, with loads of peppers and cheese. I decided he’d atoned for his behavior the previous night, but suggested that if he _really_ wanted to make it up to me, he could tie me to one of the armed dining chairs in the room and smack me around a little bit. Since it was a special occasion and all.

Stan was a killjoy on that front, asking whether I wanted to walk around a fancy casino in a classy outfit with a split lip. I wasn’t too fussed about the prospect, but I could see why he wouldn’t want every passerby thinking he beat his pregnant girlfriend. Not that every passerby would give us more than the most cursory of glances…until we started winning. If tonight went anything like last night had, drawing some attention was probably inevitable. I sighed and admitted he had a point.

Clearly, I didn’t do a very good job at concealing my disappointment. Stan nudged me playfully. “Hey, tell you what. Why don’t we just head over to the Venetian _now_ , and after we’ve taken all their money we’ll grab some dinner and come back here for the night.”

I pounced on him and hugged him.

Another benefit to gambling earlier in the day was that we didn’t feel obligated to dress up quite as much. I accented my blouse and khakis with a pair of flats and a little jewelry. I didn’t feel nearly as fancy, but at least the arches of my feet weren’t going to become vessels for torture within a few hours. And if we weren’t going to be out after dark, I didn’t have to coat myself in special lotion.

There were real gondolas outside the Venetian, and it was incredibly tempting to ask Stan how much it would cost to go for a ride in one. Then I remembered that after last night, we could certainly afford a boat ride. _Then_ I remembered how hard it had been to get Stan to leave the casino last night, and figured I’d rather not spend my limited free time on a gondola, no matter how fun and romantic it looked.

Part of me had been wondering whether luck would still be with me today. A night like yesterday’s surely should have stretched the limits of my uncanny good fortune. But no—the kid was still with me, and it seemed as if that meant the luck was, too. The afternoon went much the same as last night had, with the exception that this time we weren’t _surprised_ by our amazing wins. Stan started at the craps table, and I went for roulette again. I didn’t have the nerve to bet on anything green this time, but I did make a straight bet on the number 4. I didn’t let it ride this time, either, but stretched out my luck into a few separate wins. I still walked away with sixty thousand dollars.

Stan was doing pretty well with the dice even without me around, but he started winning quicker and bigger when I pressed myself up against his side as he rolled. He took in a pretty substantial amount.

We decided to cash out and leave without pressing our luck. We went on to the Sahara and did pretty much the same thing. I was starting to enjoy the strategy of it, even if it wasn’t the sort of strategy a normal gambler would learn. As I watched Stan rake in another win at cards, I was mentally making lists of all the things we could do with this money. And all the things _not_ to do. I’d never been anything close to rich before. It was a little scary.

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped and got some ridiculously cheap Mexican food for dinner. It was delicious, and eating something so cheap when we now had over three hundred and forty thousand dollars (before taxes…oh no, Stan was going to look for a way to avoid paying those!) seemed wonderfully ironic. It also meant I wasn’t painfully full and sleepy afterward.

“Ready to head back?” I asked, downing a glass of water to counter the slow burn of the food.

“Almost.” He finished the last of his soda. “One more thing I wanna do, if you’re up to it.”

I shook my head in amusement. “Don’t you think we have enough money?”

“Nah, it’s not that.” He rubbed at the back of his neck nervously. Oh shit. Part of me had wondered if he’d do this, but I hadn’t actually expected it. Not really.

I swallowed hard. “What is it, then?”

Stan looked at me, then looked away. “Ah shit, you already know.”

That made it easier, somehow. I smiled and took his hand. “I don’t know anything until you ask me. I mean, tell me.”

He snorted. I waited expectantly, and he realized I was going to actually make him say it. “Well I was thinking, you know, since we’re here and all, and we’re already family, it might make sense to…you know, make it official.”

I grinned. “You just want the kid to be a Pines.”

“Hey! I oughtta be insulted by that! This comes from a place of _love_!”

I brought his hand up to my mouth and kissed it. “Yeah but you’re not, though.”

He actually blushed faintly. “Nah. I know you don’t mean it.”

“Good.” I went silent, still holding his hand, looking at him hard. “You know the kids will never forgive us for doing it without them.”

Stan nodded and rubbed the back of his neck again. “I know. But Teegs…do you _want_ the kind of wedding Mabel and Dave would plan?”

I shuddered. “No.”

He cracked a smile. “Alright then! So…you wanna?”

I bit my lip. “Are you sure you want to get married in Vegas? Again?”

“Yeah.” He leaned across the table, extending his hand those extra few inches to cup my cheek. “You’re nothing like Marilyn, sweetheart. I been in love with _you_ for twenty-six years.”

Ah, damn it, that was the line that did me in. I felt the tears well up in my eyes, and I nodded mutely. I got up, walked around the little table, and sat down sideways in his lap so I could kiss him. “Yeah,” I said thickly. “Okay then. Yes. I do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks this chapter to Cartoon_Idiot_59 for giving me some extra tips and insights on Vegas. I've never been, and research only takes you so far.


	7. Chapter 7

“So how much _is_ 340 grand after taxes?” Dave asked, pretending to be a lot less interested than he actually was.

“I got it.” Nicky’s phone was already in his hands. “So maybe thirty-five percent, it says. Is that right? That seems high. Off of three-hundred forty thousand…hold on.”

“We’re not _paying_ taxes on it,” Stan said stubbornly.

“Yeah, and technically I’m married to Stetson Pinefield,” I countered. “How much legal trouble do you want to get in, honey? Seriously.”

“Won’t get in any,” he retorted, hands settled defiantly on his hips. “We got luck on our side!”

“You really want to rely on the mysterious luck of our unborn child indefinitely?”

“Two hundred and fourteen thousand and change,” said Nicky.

“So how much of that is mine?” Dave wanted to know.

“Only the part we’re putting in your college fund,” I answered immediately, and held up a hand to forestall his furious protests. “We will also buy you a _used_ car, on condition that you use it to help drive your brothers and cousins around from time to time.”

“I can’t go anywhere, though,” said Horace.

“They’re not our cousins,” pointed out Nicky.

“Not _all_ the time, though?” Dave demanded.

I took a deep breath. “I know you can’t, sweetie. I know they’re not, but you knew exactly who I meant, didn’t you. No, not all the time, just once in a while.”

My eldest son positively lit up—metaphorically, of course. I was the only one in my family who glowed. I wondered if that would change when the baby arrived. Could a gene trait that I hadn’t been born with get passed on to my offspring? I’d put it on the list of weird science crap to ask Ford.

Dave actually went so far as to hug first me, then Stan in his excitement. “Do I get any say in what it is?”

“It ain’t gonna be a Ferrari,” Stan warned him at once.

Dave laughed. “I know _that_!”

“You’re not buying it from Gleeful, are you?” Nicky demanded pointedly.

“Whaddya take me for, kid?” Stan replied, which made _Nick_ smile, too.

“We’ll check the listings online,” I assured them both. “Stan’ll know what’s a good buy and what isn’t. Right, hon?”

“You bet,” he agreed.

“And you’re not moving,” Horace said suspiciously.

I put my arm around him. “We are _not_ moving,” I repeated. _Not unless we find a way to take you with us,_ I added silently. Remodeling the entire house while we were living in it didn’t sound like the most pleasant challenge. If I could find a way to move all of us to a bigger house instead, I would jump at the chance. Earlier this month I’d asked Ford to investigate possible solutions for Horace. Maybe now that Stan realized we had good luck firmly on our side, it was time to check in on what he’d found and see if there was anything we could _do_.

Besides, we still needed to tell him we’d gotten married.

The ceremony had been short and sweet. The paperwork had been…not entirely honest, but certainly not challenging. We’d held hands and looked into each other’s eyes and said all the requisite words. I’d cried until tears of happiness were dripping off my chin, purely because of the look on Stan’s face as he said them. We kissed longer than we would have at a wedding with friends and family—in fact, he’d kissed me all the way back into a dip. We’d gone back to the hotel, started kissing again in the elevator, and barely made it back to our bed before consummating the marriage. Tying me to the chair had had to wait, but we still managed to fit it in before checking out of the hotel the next morning.

What a hell of a vacation. I’d thought we’d just do it in a fancy hotel bed, eat some nice food, maybe make a few thousand dollars at the casino, get a little bit pampered. Instead I was returning home with $340,000, a cheap wedding ring, and a couple of bruises that I was concealing with make-up and a long-sleeved shirt.

The boys had taken the news fairly well. As I’d predicted, they were a little hurt they hadn’t been there, but I pointed out that we were already operating as a family and this had basically just been paperwork. Horace accepted it at that. Dave accepted it when I told him I hadn’t even been wearing a dress or brushed my hair—nothing of real significance could possibly happen without dressing up first, ergo he hadn’t missed out. Nicky accepted it when I changed the subject to winning a bunch of money. I don’t even know what he thought he was going to gain from us winning money. What did high school freshman _need_? Video games? Axe body spray?

“I can tell my friends, right?” Dave asked eagerly.

“About the car, or about the money?”

“Both?”

I looked over at Stan. He scowled, and I could almost read what was going through his mind: _My money! Our money! Don’t go blabbing it to everyone, they’ll all want a piece!_

I laid a hand gently on his knee and smiled. “Of course you can tell them about the car,” I told Dave. “You can tell them we won a little bit while we were on vacation. I don’t think there’s any harm in that.”

Stan nodded vigorously. “A _little_ bit. I’ll give you each a hundred bucks to keep your mouths shut!”

Nicky crossed his arms defiantly. “Five hundred.”

My jaw dropped. “Nicholas Michael Kettle!”

Stan just laughed. “Not on your life, kid! Two hundred, and you don’t get grounded. Final offer.”

“You can’t ground me, you’re not my dad!” Something about the way he said that made it feel more like a test than genuine defiance, but I was still unimpressed.

“Kid,” said Stan levelly, “look at your mom’s face and tell me if you think you’re gonna get a better offer.”

He looked. I glared. “Fine, two hundred,” said Nicky. 

In a rare display of brotherly love, Dave held out his fist for Nicky to bump. “Nice one.”

“You’re welcome,” Nicky replied, tapping it with his own.

Horace held his fist out to him, too. He’d gotten very good at using Amazon for purchases in the past six months—a little too good, to my mind. He had a knack for slipping by with things that were “just a dollar over” his allowance. “Can we tell Dipper and Mabel?” he asked, still grinning.

Stan and I exchanged glances, and he shrugged. “Might as well let ‘em.”

I leaned my head into his shoulder. “You’re a sweetheart, you know.”

He made a sound of dissent and postured briefly, then subsided. 

Less than a minute had passed since we’d given them permission to alert the twins. Stan’s phone rang. A video call from Mabel. “Ugh, I hate these,” he complained, but he answered it. 

“You got _married_?” she shrieked the second her face appeared on the screen. We froze like deer in the headlights, exchanging guilty looks. Why had we assumed the kids would think we meant _tell them about the money_? Fortunately, Mabel continued. “Finally! Oh my gosh, congratulations! You have pictures, right? You better have pictures! I can’t believe you did it without me!”

“We didn’t plan it, pumpkin,” Stan half-apologized. “Who told her?” he hissed to me under his breath.

She heard, of course. “Dave and Horace. Is Nicky there? I have a bone to pick with him…”

Nicky could hear her. “I wrote Dipper first,” he shouted, “so sue me!”

“I _will_ sue you,” she called back, grinning. “I’ll sue you so hard you won’t know what hit you!”

“Sue Mom and Stan,” he retorted. “They’re the ones who actually did it!”

She blew a raspberry. “I can’t get mad at _them_ , they’re _newlyweds!_ ”

“Mabel!” We heard Dipper off-screen now. “Nick just told me Teagan married Stan!”

“No doy, I’m already on the line with them.”

“Here, let me say hi then.” He appeared next to her on the screen, adjusting his hat. “Hi Grunkle Stan, hi Teagan.” We both said hello, with the boys shouting greetings from across the living room.

Horace peeked over my shoulder. “Hi, Mabel! Hey, Dipper.”

“Horace!” Dipper grinned. “How’s it going, my man? Eat any more new foods?”

“Buckets!” Horace returned the smile with interest. “And guess what?”

“What?” Dipper and Mabel chorused. It warmed my heart.

“I hate grapefruit!”

“Well who _doesn’t_?” Mabel answered at once, making a face. “You might as well eat a lemon!”

“Oooh, I haven’t tried that yet.” He thought back. “At least, not since I died. My old mom used to make lemonade in the summer.”

“That has _sugar_ , though,” Dipper pointed out. “Is everyone there?”

Nicky put his hand on Stan’s phone, adjusting its angle so that he’d appear on screen as well. Stan let him do it, despite the haggling just a minute ago—he had a soft spot for that kid. My heart warmed even more. “Yep, we’re here. I’ve got a question for you, actually.”

“Okay, shoot.”

I was starting to feel like Stan and I were extraneous to this entire conversation, but since it was his phone we were stuck. Good. I liked being privy to the kids’ conversations.

“Can I give Amy your phone number?” Nicky asked.

Dipper looked like the slightest push could have knocked him down. “What?”

Mabel squealed. “I told you, bro-bro! Didn’t I tell you?”

“No. You told me she liked Nicky.”

“Who didn’t make a move and totally blew it! She’s moved on!”

“I didn’t _blow_ it,” Nicky protested. “I don’t like her like that! Anyhow, she wants to know if you’re coming for Christmas.”

“Uh. Um,” said Dipper eloquently.

Stan laughed. “You’ll say yes if you know what’s good for you, Dipper! Girls like that don’t come along every day, lemme tell ya.”

Dave leaned over my shoulder, shoving Horace back so that he had to float. “Do it, Dip. Hot tip though, if she asks you to send her a picture, she doesn’t mean the six hundred photos of moss you’ve got on your camera.”

“It’s not moss!” Dipper retorted hotly, flushing bright pink.

“Yeah,” Nicky defended him, “it’s a rare type of andreaeopsida!”

“And it was growing in a distinct horseshoe pattern on a tree!” Dipper added.

Mabel rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe Amy _likes_ you dorks!”

“You think we’re off the hook?” I asked Stan quietly while they continued ribbing each other.

He shook his head. “I think we got five minutes before Mabel starts demanding photos again.”

“Are we sending them each two hundred bucks, too?” I asked, now whispering into his ear. I didn’t care if it looked like we were necking.

He thought about it. “Might as well. They’ll hear about it if we don’t.”

I looked at him hard, appreciatively. “I never thought I’d see the day you’d willingly give away a thousand dollars.”

“It’s easier when you’ve got a few hundred thousand to spare.”

I rubbed my nose against his neck. “I love you.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He smiled, eyes sparkling. “Keep it in your pants, crazy lady.”

*

Until I met Stan, I had never realized how much fun Halloween could be. I’d enjoyed it as a child, sure, and I’d liked taking my kids around the neighborhood when they were younger. But I’d never gotten _into_ it. After two Summerweens and a Halloween with Stan Pines, I had embraced the creepy holiday. The amount we’d spent on decorating the house this year didn’t put a dent in our bank account, but it was also more than we would have shelled out if we _hadn’t_ won big in Vegas. There were lights in the bushes, giant moving spiders, pumpkins lining the sidewalk, and zombie arms sticking up out of the front lawn. We also had king-size candy bars, for anyone brave enough to walk past all that and risk Stan jumping out and spurting fake blood all over them.

He was dressed as Count Dracula this year. I was wearing a long white Victorian-style nightgown, my hair pulled back in an appropriate period style by Dave. My son had also helped me with my make-up, putting some very convincing bloody holes on my throat. I loved it.

Dave was in a very good mood that evening. He’d even consented to taking pictures of Stan and I posing in various spooky, dramatic ways. My eldest son was dressed to the nines as Dr. Frank-N-Furter. He looked amazing, if a little unsettling. Thompson, he assured me, had an equally amazing Eddie costume. They were going to a party at Robbie’s house. He was driving there in his new car. I was very nervous about the whole thing, and had made him promise over and over again to spend the night instead of driving home if there was any sort of drinking. That was probably exactly what he wanted, but I’d rather risk him having sex than risk him getting hurt.

Nicky was going trick-or-treating still, refusing to be too old for it just because he’d started high school. He, Mark, Cody, and Amy had worked together to make their costumes, turning themselves into their DD&MD characters. They were huge nerds. No one else would know who they were supposed to be. And that didn’t matter to them one bit. I loved them to pieces.

Horace stood on the front porch, arms crossed, staring down the stereotypical white sheet ghost we’d put up there. “That’s not very realistic,” he muttered. I ruffled his hair and smiled. Last year, he’d been ecstatic to be included in Halloween. This year, he was bitter than he couldn’t go out trick-or-treating with his friends. I’d asked Ford again about solutions to this problem, but he claimed to have had very little time to spare for independent research this fall. I suspected he’d just gotten caught up in his own life and forgotten. I didn’t blame him, but I didn’t intend to quit nagging him about it, either.

Not that my kid was going to let his inability to go anywhere keep him down. He’d made himself a costume just like the rest of his gaming group and had been a part of all the pictures before his brothers and friends took off. Now he was arguing with Stan over who got to hand out candy.

“I’m _bored_ ,” he whined plaintively. “Last year you and Mom watched a movie and let me do it. Why can’t I do it _this_ year?”

“This is my favorite holiday, Ace,” Stan tried telling him gently. “I’m _trying_ to settle down into this whole family gig, but I need one day a year to scare the living crap outta all the neighborhood kids! You can’t take that away from me!”

“You already _had_ one day,” protested Horace. “It was in July!”

“I’m having a kid, I’m stressed out, I need another!”

“Then what am _I_ supposed to do?”

Stan looked to me for help. I bit my lip, thinking, hating to take sides. “The little kids are out in force right now,” I reminded Stan. “You can’t scare them anyway. Let Horace take the first shift, come bite my neck for a little while.”

This placated both of them for the time being, though I suspected we’d be having the same argument in an hour. The doorbell rang, and the freckled blonde kid dressed as a dark elven mage ran to answer it. I led Stan over to the sofa in the living room.

“I promise,” I swore, “when it hits 7:00, I’ll drag him over here and let him choose a movie to watch with me. And you can scare the living daylights out of anyone over the age of six.”

“I guess that’s fair,” he grudgingly agreed. “You’ll do the thing with me at least once, though?”

_The thing_ in this case had nothing to do with sex, and everything to do with emitting a bloodcurdling scream and collapsing when he bit into my neck on the front porch. I was fairly sure it would end with my costume coated in fake blood, so I wasn’t keen for it to happen to early into the evening anyhow. “Yes,” I agreed, turning on the tv. “I promised, didn’t I?”

We heard the door open a second time, and a chorus of adorable “Trick or treats.” I muted the tv and listened to Horace telling the kids he liked their costumes. There was an old movie about a swamp creature that seemed like it had just started, and I turned the sound back on. “So what do you think, mad scientist next year?” I asked as Stan sat down next to me. “I could get the lab coat, the glasses, rat out my hair a little bit. We could strap the little guy to your chest and make it look like I grew an extra head out of you.”

He was already picturing it, I could just tell. “I love it! Sweetie, you’re a genius.”

“Mad scientist,” I corrected him with a wink.

He laughed. “Bet you could just borrow some of Ford’s old lab gear. You know he’s got the right stuff.”

I smirked. “But would you really want to fuck me in Ford’s old clothes?”

“You slept in his sleeping bag the first week you were here in ’89, didn’t you? And I still wanted you plenty then.”

This sort of comment, even a few months out from my adventure, merited a very long, deep kiss. “I’m so happy you can just remember things like that now.”

“Me too!” He relaxed back into the sofa cushions. “Ya know, if I’m wearing the kid as part of my costume, I probably shouldn’t be banging you anyhow, Teegs.”

I made a face. “I hadn’t thought about th—whoa.”

Stan’s brow furrowed. “Whoa?”

I nodded, my palm already going to bump concealed by my flowing nightgown. “He moved!”

“No kidding!” Stan sat up straighter, examining my stomach with what I could only describe as excitement. We’d had all the extra tests done just a few weeks ago (the fact that they indicated a perfectly healthy child was no longer a surprise) and heard the heartbeat again. He’d been pale and nervous that day, maybe even more than the first time, at this audible confirmation that he had created life. The scale of that responsibility had shaken him that day. But now, tonight, he looked like a kid at Christmas. “Can I feel it?”

I took his hand, placing it flat where mine had been and then adjusting slightly. “You probably won’t be able to. I think it takes longer before you can feel from the outside. But it was definitely—” I broke off as a strange ripple, almost like water in a bathtub, went through my womb. “There he goes again!”

A look of mixed concentration and disappointment sat on Stan’s face. “I can’t feel anything.”

I smiled encouragingly. “Don’t worry, you will. By spring, you’ll be able to _see_ him somersaulting around in there.” I pressed my hand next to his, impressed with the little guy already. “Jeez, I’d forgotten how _weird_ that is!” I grinned. “He’s strong, Stan.”

That managed to knock the mild frustration off his face. “Course he is! He’s a Pines.”

“Yes,” I agreed, thinking about the paperwork I’d filled out after getting home from vacation. _Teagan Pines_. It still felt strange and new, and I kept screwing up my own signature. “He sure is.”

*

Two days before Thanksgiving, we found out how very wrong we were. Not about the Pines thing. Not about strength, or luck, or anything like that. But we were wrong on one pretty significant point.

“Are you sure?” I asked the ultrasound tech as she pushed the warm gel around my abdomen with a wand. Stan, standing by the bed and holding my hand, hadn’t said a word.

The tech held the wand in place and went back to staring at the screen. “Well, I’ll double-check it, but yes. It was a nice clear view.”

I’d have to take her word for it on that, because it all looked like a bunch of black and grey weather maps to me. She’d had to point out the eyes and nose to us when we were looking at what was supposedly our child’s face. I glanced over at my husband while we waited for her to get a better look. Inside me, the kid squirmed, and the tech said “Ah-ha!” Both our heads snapped to the computer screen. “Okay, here, look,” she told us patiently, pointing to various blobs on the screen. “It’s like she knew what we were looking for, she rolled right over! Right there, see? Leg, leg, there’s the umbilical cord. I can have someone else take a look and confirm it if you like, but you’ve got a little girl here.”

I laughed, shakily. “I guess it’s a good thing we didn’t choose a name yet, huh?”

“Or start remodeling,” Stan agreed, sounding stunned. “We can just put her in with Mabel!”

“Honey, a teenage girl is not going to want to share her room with a baby.”

He must have known I was right, because he didn’t have a response. We looked at the fuzzy grey image on the screen again. “I’ve got a daughter.”

A little version of Stan was one thing. I could handle boys. I could handle all the trouble a Pines boy would get into. But a _girl_? What the heck was I going to do with a girl?

At least there was only one of them.

*

“Oh my gosh Teakettle, you’re _huge_!”

“Merry Christmas to you, too, Mabel.”

“Sorry! Merry Christmas! I just—wow! And you still have another four months?”

“Mabel,” her brother hissed, “you’re not supposed to _say_ that!”

“But _Dipper_ , it’s _Teakettle,_ ” she explained patiently. “And she _is_ huge!”

I was actually perfectly healthy and trim for a woman twenty-four weeks pregnant, so _huge_ might not have been the best choice of words. But I knew what she meant, and the baby bump _was_ way more obvious than it had been the last time she’d seen me. I pulled my niece-in-law into a hug made only slightly awkward by Little Pines. I got Dipper next. He then escaped past me into the house, announcing his presence to the boys. After a quick glance to ascertain that there was no one else in the entranceway to hug, she continued talking to me with her usual energy.

“So how are you feeling?”

“I’m doing well. Er, Mabel…”

Behind her, Stan cleared his throat. She was blocking the doorway, and he was getting snow in his hair.

She blew a raspberry and made crazy eyes. “Derp, sorry Grunkle Stan! I’m just looking at your _wife_!” She elbowed him in the ribs and winked, but she also stepped aside so he could shut the front door.

“Ford’s not here yet?” he asked as he removed his coat.

I stepped forward, dusting flakes out of his hair for him. A few had melted on his glasses already. I landed a quick, chaste kiss, and stepped back. “Not yet. I don’t know _why_ he wanted to drive, the roads are probably slowing him down!” We’d last heard from Ford when he landed at the airport—he hadn’t had any baggage to collect, and he’d been in line for a rental car. He should have been here by now, that was why Stan had gone to collect the twins from the bus stop by himself. 

“Probably just everyone heading home after the holidays,” he suggested. “He’d call if there was trouble.” I wasn’t sure if that was just the strain of the holidays I saw in his face, or a hint of worry.

“Are the roads that bad?”

“Not here.” He kicked off his boots. Mabel had already heard Dave descending the stairs and run off to hug him.

“But you’re worried?”

“Nah, he’ll be fine.” Stan waved a dismissive hand. I didn’t buy it. Ford might be the older twin, but Stan had lost him for twelve years, and then again for thirty years. He’d get mad at him from time to time, sure, but there was always going to be that tiny lingering fear of losing him again.

“I’ll call and check in,” I volunteered.

“No need,” said a familiar voice as Ford opened the front door.

Stan jumped, then scowled. “You scared the hell outta me, Sixer!”

Not having a wife around to do it for him, Ford dusted his own snowflakes off his hair and jacket. Then he proceeded to hang it neatly in the hall closet. “By being five minutes late, or by walking in unannounced?”

“Both!” Stan punched him lightly in the arm, already smiling.

“Hi, Ford.” I gave a little wave of greeting.

“Teagan!” He looked at me, and his eyebrows rose slightly. “You’re looking well.”

“Mabel just told her she was huge,” Stan informed him.

“No, of course not!” He followed us into the living room. The kids had already vanished upstairs. “You just look very, er…pregnant.”

I groaned and sat down, taking the weight off my feet. “It’s going to get a lot worse! I don’t know how your mom endured carrying twins.” I paused to reflect on the faded snapshot Ford had texted me last week, of himself and Stan as tiny infants. One of the babies in the picture had been squalling furiously; you could tell his face was red even in the black and white photo. The other had been staring with eyes wide open and mouth closed. They were cute little guys, though. I rested my hand on my own little one. _Just a few more months, and we’ll all get to hold you and see how much you look like your daddy._

“She dancing again?” Stan asked, noticing my movement.

“Not now.” I splayed my fingers and pressed gently, to be sure. “Hey kiddo. Your uncle Ford’s here, wanna say hi?”

We waited a few seconds, but when nothing happened Stan resumed conversation. “She’s a dancer,” he told his brother with obvious pride. “Always moving.” He smiled and put a hand on my shoulder. “She’s gonna be trouble, right, Teegs?”

“Undoubtedly,” I agreed.

“You never know, she could take after her uncle,” Ford suggested with a vaguely superior smirk.

“Yeah, right, ‘cause _you_ never got into trouble,” Stan scoffed. “Intergalatic criminal, can’t get a ride in a space taxi he’s so infamous, but maybe she’ll take after _you_.”

Ford sighed. “I suppose you have a point. Still, maybe she’ll have…” He trailed off, seeing the way my face had lit up.

I nodded, quickly grabbing Stan’s hand and placing it where my own had been moments before. Silence. Then his lips parted in surprise, and a look of wonder came over his face. “I _felt_ it,” he said in hushed tones. “I _felt_ her, sweetie! Ford, you gotta feel this!”

He had absolutely no qualms about inviting his brother to stick his hand on my midsection. “Oh, no, I couldn’t,” Ford protested nervously.

I realized that I had no qualms with it, either. “Go on,” I told him. “Quick, before she stops.”

Awkwardly and tentatively, Ford set his six-fingered hand next to his brother’s. “Er. Hello…little one. I…Stanley, I’m really no good with babies, I don’t—” He stopped mid-sentence. “Oh! That’s…” A smile spread over his face, and Stan met his eyes. “That really is something!”

I felt a little ridiculous, reclining on the sofa with a Pines twin on either side of me, resting their hands on my unborn baby as she wriggled around inside like she was doing the tango. But seeing the way it made my husband smile was enough to bring tears to my eyes. I blinked.

“See? Told you she’s a dancer.”

*

Just as it had been last year, Boxing Day dinner was chaos. Soos, Melody, and Abuelita joined us, bringing food contributions. Dave had invited Thompson this year, who started out shy and quiet but wound up having a long and animated conversation about movies with Mel and Soos as Dave looked on adoringly. Nicky kept looking over Dipper’s shoulder every time he picked up his phone, trying to see if he was arranging a date with Amy. Mabel and Abuelita were playing a game of Hearts with Horace. Ford was showing off some of the programs on his sleek new laptop to Stan, who looked more perplexed than impressed. Little Pines was dancing the night away. Life was good.

It wasn’t until the following day that things calmed down enough for me to corner Ford and ask him about ghosts. “So what’s the word?” I asked when he was kind enough to enter the kitchen and ask if I needed any assistance with breakfast. “You can’t tell me you _still_ haven’t had time to do any research.”

“No,” he admitted, pulling out one of the kitchen chairs and taking a seat. “I can’t tell you that. But I almost wish I could, Teagan. The answers I got were…disturbing.”

I raised my eyebrows and cracked an egg, unimpressed. “Of course it’s disturbing, we’re basically talking about raising the dead. Stan didn’t even want me asking.”

Ford sighed. “But you’re determined.”

I got another egg from the carton. “Well, let me know what I’m up against, before you ask me to write it off! What did you find out?”

He tapped his fingers on the table, staring out the window at the snowy yard. “I should begin by saying that nothing I’ve read or learned fits precisely with Horace’s situation. Going strictly by a checklist of abilities, he is a powerful poltergeist. However, most poltergeists of similar strength use their powers considerably differently, which makes it difficult to judge. From everything I’ve read and encountered, Horace should be using his abilities to make pictures scream, taxidermy vomit blood, drop the temperature of the house to freezing, turn your dreams into nightmares from which it’s nearly impossible to wake, lift beds, possess humans, and throw cutlery around the house at high velocities.”

I flinched. “Yeesh!”

Ford nodded stoically. “Exactly.”

I shook my head and cracked the next egg. “But that doesn’t sound anything like Horace!”

“He’s able to manipulate objects within the house to a greater extent than anything on record,” he told me frankly. “Which doesn’t necessarily mean it’s never happened before, only that it’s never been recorded. For example, in the only cases I’ve found which references ghosts eating, they are drinking blood from a sacrifice or sucking life force from living creatures.”

I made another face. “Horace likes cheese boodles and chocolate.”

“Precisely. He has the power to wreak havoc, and instead he focuses it all on pretending to be a living human child.”

Some of these unpleasant details were new, but basically he was just telling me things I already knew. “So what can we do to _help_ him?”

He sighed. “Operating on the assumption that he _is_ a powerful poltergeist, I did find several sources that agreed on a recipe, if you will, that could give him a new life. But I’ve never done it, and it’s not pretty.”

“But it’s possible?” I pressed.

Ford’s lips compressed into a thin line. “I believe it is, yes.”

I grinned. “Then we’re doing it.”

“Doing what?” asked Horace himself, walking into the kitchen. How he could get wrinkled clothes and hair that flattened on one side, when he wasn’t even corporeal when he slept, was completely beyond me. “Ooh, are you making scrambled eggs?” He raised a hand in greeting to Ford and smiled sweetly. “I love scrambled eggs!”

“I’m making French toast, actually,” I told him. “It’s sweet, I think you’ll like it.”

He settled in next to the counter, watching me with interest. “You made that when the twins got in last summer too, didn’t you? It had vanilla and cinnamon in it, it smelled really good.”

He hadn’t been eating at that point, but he still remembered? “Impressive,” I praised him. “Yes, that’s it. Want to help me, or saving your energy?”

Horace looked like he wanted to, but held back. “I should save my energy. Dipper and Mabel are here, we’re probably going to do all sorts of things today.” That made sense. Even powerful poltergeists got tired from being completely solid for too long, it seemed. “So what are you guys talking about?”

Ford waggled his eyebrows at me, silently inquiring whether we were going to tell Horace what we were up to. I nodded. At this point, he deserved to know. “Teagan was asking me whether there’s any way to give you a more permanent corporeal form,” he told the kid.

Horace stared at him, wide-eyed, and then turned his gaze on me. “You want to make it so I can _leave_ the _house_?” Excitement started to creep into his voice. “Go out with my friends? Go to _school_? Climb trees?” The excitement—and his pitch—were definitely increasing as he considered the implications. “I could go to the park? I could actually _see_ the Mystery Shack? Or the lake? Or the mall?”

“Keep it down, you’ll wake the whole house.” I put a hand on his shoulder to calm him.

Horace scoffed. “I’ll wake _Dipper. Maybe._ The rest of them could sleep through anything!”

I tilted my head, acknowledging this truth. “Still, don’t get too excited. Ford hasn’t even told me what we’d have to do yet, for it to be possible.”

“Oh.” Horace sat down opposite Ford, leaning forward so hard he went partway through the table. “So what do we have to do?”

Ford grimaced. “As I was just telling Teagan, it’s not very nice.” He flicked his eyes toward me one more time, then shrugged. “It would involve consuming the bones of your old body, the blood of your enemy, and the flesh of a newborn.”

Horace and I both balked at that.

“I’m not eating that stuff!” he exclaimed, looking repulsed.

“Good,” I exclaimed, feeling like I might faint. “Because I’m not giving you our baby! Or anyone else’s baby!” Holding onto the kitchen counter, I turned back to Ford. “Isn’t there any other way?”

“Maybe.” He hesitated, looking grave. “I can think of some possible substitutions. But the whole thing is outdated and unlikely to work even if we followed the recipe to the letter. For this to have even a _chance_ of success, you would need a lot of luck.”

A lot of luck.

I looked at Horace and smiled.


	8. Chapter 8

Reviving Horace was going to take more than a lot of luck, as we found out over the coming weeks. It was going to take a lot of _work_.

Ford’s revised recipe didn’t involve anyone or anything dying, which was a huge relief. It still, unfortunately, involved Horace’s bones. That meant that we had to find his grave. You would think—or at least, I did—that we’d just be able to ask him where he was buried. But he didn’t know. The part of Horace that we knew hadn’t been there, after all. His memories, spirit, soul, whatever it was that made him Horace, had a giant blank spot from the moment of his death to about a year later. His family had moved out by then, probably eager to get away from the bad memories associated with his death. No one who would have been there was still alive. And while odds were pretty high on him being buried somewhere in Gravity Falls, the town had three cemeteries. One of which was pretty large.

First, all the kids tried search online. We lived in an age where we were used to the internet answering most of our questions for us, and the fact that five teenagers armed with search engines and the exact name and dates for the deceased couldn’t find a damn thing was galling. I wasn’t sure Nick would ever recover from the shock of being let down by the internet.

Ford looked into microfilm at the local library and history museum. There was one brief article about his death which provided a few notable details, but one of those details was _not_ the location of his grave.

So the really old fashioned way was the way we had to go. That meant spending chunks of Mabel and Dipper’s last few days of vacation wandering around snowy graveyards. The kids still spent plenty of time exploring, gaming, staying up late, shopping, and talking. Mabel and Dave spent almost an entire day at the mall. Dipper, taking Stan’s advice over Mabel’s for some reason, took Amy to the bowling alley. Nicky, as the first person to have adopted Horace into the family, took his quest very seriously and spent more time checking out cemeteries than anyone.

By the time winter break ended, we hadn’t managed to find the darn thing yet. We could safely eliminate the smallest of the town’s cemeteries…or at least we thought we could, until Dave pointed out that some of the older, smaller plaques were probably completely covered with snow. I hadn’t expected this effort to be easy, but I hadn’t expected it to be tedious and frustrating. Then again, it was certainly worse for Horace himself. Since he wouldn’t manifest at all outside of the house, he couldn’t even help us search.

In lieu of finding his grave, we focused on the middle ingredient Ford had suggested to us. The blood of an enemy. Nicky whined that this sounded like the premise from some fantasy novel, which I was inclined to agreed with. “These ideas persist in fantasy because they have an ancient basis in _fact_ ,” Ford told us primly, and it was hard to argue with that.

“But,” Horace objected the second time the subject came up, “I don’t _have_ any enemies! Everyone I used to know died _ages_ ago, and the only people I know _now_ are all of you!” That wasn’t technically true, since he also knew his DD&MD friends, and Thompson, and Soos’ family—but none of them would really qualify as enemies, either. Dipper suggested the person who had been driving the car that killed Horace as a possibility, but there were two problems with that. First, we didn’t know who that had been. And secondly, if they’d been old enough to drive in 1921, there was no way they were still doing anything at all in 2015.

When Ford found that tiny, ancient blip of an article about the accident, it felt like a miracle. I patted my stomach and thanked Little Pines. About _time_ she brought us some luck on this front! _Robert Northwest, son of our beloved Mayor, was involved in a tragic accident yesterday_ , the article read. _The_ Herald _has it on good authority that several local children were taking advantage of the sudden bought of warmer weather to sled down Turner Street. One of them failed to stop just as Mr. Northwest, also enjoying the sunshine, directed his new Model A down the street. Naturally, Mr. Northwest rushed the injured child to his parents, but he succumbed to his injuries at his home shortly thereafter. Mr. Northwest tells the_ Herald _that is profoundly grieved by this preventable accident, and that he plans to make a sizeable donation to aid the family in funeral expenses._

“He didn’t even go to _trial_?” Mabel demanded indignantly upon reading the copy Ford brought back to the house. “You _know_ that’s a cover-up!”

Dipper made a similar face of disgust. “Robert Northwest…that must have been Nathaniel’s son, then. Preventable accident is right! He was probably out for a joyride and wasn’t even looking!”

Nicky put a hand on Horace’s shoulder, worried about how a conversation about his death might be affecting him. “How much do you remember?”

Horace shrugged. He seemed to be doing alright, but there was a faraway look in his eyes that wasn’t normally there. “Just what I told you before. I saw a car coming but couldn’t stop the sled. It happened really fast.” He shifted uncomfortably. “The newspaper might be telling the truth. Maybe the driver really _did_ feel bad.”

“No way, he was a Northwest!”

“Oh come on, Dipper, Pacifica’s a Northwest, and _she’s_ not so bad.”

Dipper grudgingly conceded that point. I’d heard the name before, around the house and around town, but I didn’t think I’d ever met the girl. “But her dad’s still a jerk! How much you want to bet her grandpa or great-grandpa or whatever was, too?”

Stan looked skeptical. “You guys saying the _Northwests_ are Ace’s enemy?”

“I don’t _have_ any enemies!” Horace protested yet again.

“Then unless you wanna stay dead, you better make some!”

I put my face in my hands. “That’s terrible advice, Stan.”

“I’m tryin’ here!” I knew he was. It was still terrible advice.

“Let’s just say,” I suggested, trying to smooth things over, “that the man who killed Horace, even accidentally, constitutes an enemy. He’s long dead. Would his ancestors count?”

Ford, who had been listening quietly to our debate, now nodded thoughtfully. “I accounted for that when I made up the new suggested formula. A direct descendent should suffice.”

Dave paled. “Are you saying we have to ask _Pacifica Northwest_ for some blood?”

“Or her father,” Ford pointed out. “Though I agree, Pacifica is far more likely to listen to such a request.”

“But she’s the most popular girl in school!” Dave objected, looking scandalized. “We can’t just call her up and say hey, do you mind if I cut you, we need some blood for our dead brother!”

“ _We_ can,” Mabel declared with confidence.

This didn’t reassure Dave. “Yeah sure, _you_ can. Until she finds out it’s me and Nicky, and then our social lives are over!”

“You’re dating Thompson, your social life has been over since we moved here,” Nicky interjected.

Dave’s eyes flashed. “You have a problem with my boyfriend?”

Nicky actually looked surprised. “No. Just stating a fact.” Dipper and Mabel, judging by their faces, didn’t think he was wrong.

My eldest scowled. “I have a _nice, cute, older_ boyfriend who has a _good_ job and a _car_ , and he’s been nothing but sweet to all of us. Fuck you guys, I don’t _care_ what you think!”

The other three exchanged guilty glances. Horace looked more uncomfortable now than he had when they’d been discussing his death.

“Good for you, kid!” Stan broke the silence by slapping Dave on the back. Dave wasn’t expecting it, and nearly got knocked off the sofa. “Stand by your man! Always knew you had spine.”

Dave didn’t seem able to work out whether or not this was really a compliment, but it did shut him up and let us get back on track.

“Nicky?” Horace asked timidly. “Are you okay with them asking this Pacifica girl for some blood? If Ford really thinks it would help?”

“Of course,” Nicky stated loudly. “You’re way more important than my social life!”

“Oh, please!” Mabel blew a raspberry. “Pacifica’s not gonna wreck your lives over something like this! She might think it’s a little _weird_ , sure, but it’ll be just fine. You’ll see!”

*

For once, Mabel’s optimism seemed to be in line with reality. Maybe it was just Little Pines’ influence, since I was the one who wound up driving Dipper and Mabel out to the almost palatial home on the rich side of town—but it wasn’t as though I got out of the car and brought my lucky charm anywhere too close.

What I did was park my car at the back of a wide driveway ending in a three-car garage. The snow had been pushed out of this drive by a professional plow, nothing like the job Nick and Dip had done at our house this morning. The Christmas lights on the enormous house were currently off, but they were clearly both elaborate and tasteful—a tough balance to strike, I knew well enough. Our house had started out with just a few strings of white and blue icicles, but Horace loved the idea of holiday lights so much that we’d gotten a little carried away this year. Just like at Halloween, really. The Kettle-Pines household liked its holidays.

Mabel had dragged Dipper along on this expedition because he was, as she put it, “Pacifica’s favorite.” They had let Dave and Nicky take another run at cemetery hunting, instead. I listened to the music on 101.2, watching the twins approach the front door of the Northwest home. Mabel was wearing a blue and white snowflake sweater and carrying a plate of cookies we’d baked together the other day. Dipper was in a dark blue flannel shirt and his ever-present trapper hat, shoving his hands uncomfortably into his back pockets in a way that strongly suggested he didn’t want to be there. They rang the bell.

I could see them conversing with each other while they waited for someone to answer the door, but I had the windows up and anyway, the path leading from the drive to the elegant front porch was pretty long. I took a minute to appreciate how much the twins had changed since I’d first met them a year and a half ago. Mabel had grown at least six inches, making her taller than her brother and nearly as tall as me. She’d lost her braces, her legs were long and shapely, and her face was rapidly losing its baby fat. In another year or two, she’d be a total knockout. Dipper was actually ahead of her there; I could see why a girl like Amy would be interested in him. Last year he’d been awkward and acne-covered, but his complexion had cleared and he’d put on a bit of muscle. He had the beginnings of facial hair showing on his upper lip, and his voice had deepened into a pleasant baritone. Hopefully puberty would be as kind to Nicky (and maybe Horace) as it had been to these two.

The front door opened, and a girl came just into my line of vision. She had an inverted bob, stylish and naturally golden blonde. Her clothes were clearly designer brand. Her lips were that beautiful matte shade of pink that doesn’t occur naturally, and when the sun caught her earrings they sparkled like diamonds. I was prepared to hate her on sight, but after a moment of staring she rushed through the doorway and flung her arms around first Dipper, then Mabel. She smiled, transforming her face from a miniature Stepford wife into a real teenage girl. I could see all three of them talking. They retreated into the house.

I sat in the car and waited. Little Pines decided to do the Twist, and I reclined my seat. I relaxed, resting my hand on top of my expanding womb, feeling her move around in there. By now I’d gotten over the shock of expecting a daughter, and was starting to admire all the cute little outfits they had for girls in the baby aisles. Most of them looked far too pristine and angelic for any daughter of Stan Pines. The little tutus were tempting, given how convinced he was that she’d be a dancer, but none of the pink stuff felt quite right to me. This kid was going to need overalls, and onesies adorned with bugs or dinosaurs, and flannel pajamas.

I wished Stan would agree to choosing a name. I had a few in mind already.

My phone lit up with an incoming text. From Mabel. _Pacifica wants to hang out for a little bit! Can you believe that? She said she’ll have The Help give us a ride home later. Is that okay?_

_Of course,_ I replied at once. _Did you ask her about Horace yet?_

 _I’m working up to it,_ she responded. Guess I’d have to accept that for now.

I headed back to our side of town, stopping at the cemetery where I thought Dave and Nicky would be. They weren’t even there yet, and the wind was bitter today—maybe they’d decided it could wait a day. I headed to the department store instead, using a few stray groceries as an excuse to wander around looking at nursery furniture. We hadn’t attempted any remodeling yet, on the grounds that we had to wait and see what would happen with Horace. If our experiment succeeded and he could move, we might even be able to relocate to a nicer house. I liked imagining having a whole room to decorate for the little one.

I got back home to find my own children still there. All three of them were playing video games together, which was heartwarming. According to Dave, Stan and Ford were out investigating something in the woods. The only thing about that which surprised me was that Nicky hadn’t attempted to go along with them. Maybe without Dipper’s company, science wasn’t quite as cool. So I baked some more cookies and, for the first time in what felt like months, sat down with a mystery novel.

Mabel and Dipper returned about an hour later, glowing with pride at their victory. “Paz is in!” Mabel announced happily. “She wants to meet you first, though.”

“When?” Horace asked, nervously pausing the game and setting his controller down.

“Uh, any second now,” Dipper told him, a silent apology in his face. “She’s waiting in the car.”

Dave looked like he wanted to run out of the living room, but he set his shoulders and gave a stoic nod instead. “Cool.”

“Yay!” Mabel ran back to the door, leaning out and waving to the expensive car parked along the curb. I arranged my face into an encouraging smile for my kids. Mabel gestured the blonde princess through our front door and into the living room.

“So this is where you guys stay now?” Her lip curled ever so slightly as she surveyed the messy room, but she attempted to turn it into a polite smile. “I like your, um, your Christmas tree. It smells real!”

“It _is_ real,” Dipper replied, looking bemused. “Okay, Paz? This is Dave.” He pointed out my eldest, who turned slightly pink as he raised a hand in greeting. “And this is Nicky.”

Pacifica’s eyes narrowed slightly. It made her look bitchy, but I suspected that was just because of all the eye make-up. She might just as easily have been thinking hard, or needed glasses. “Right. I’ve seen you around school, haven’t I?” she asked Dave, tipping her head to the side.

“Yeah,” he muttered, nodding. He’d told me before she was a year behind him and seemed to be on the Homecoming court every year.

“There’s something else…” She drummed her fingers on her thigh, thinking. “Oh wait! You play guitar, right?”

Dave looked shocked that she would know that. “Yeah! How do you know?”

She gave him a thin, but not unpleasant, smile. “I’m a Northwest. It’s my job to know things.” Her gaze shifted to Horace, then on to Nicky. “You’re a _freshman._ ”

Nicky didn’t look like he appreciated the way she said that, but he remembered that Horace needed her help and worked up something close to a smile. “Yeah.”

“I’m _so sorry_ ,” she said in a way that suggested she’d actually suffered back when _she_ was a Freshman. Which I found rather unlikely, but at least she was being nice. She turned her attention back to Horace, and then looked over to the twins for information.

Mabel skipped over to the spot in front of the tv and wrapped Horace in a backward hug. “Yep! This is our little cousin, Horace! See how cute he is?” She pinched Horace’s cheeks. He flickered, dropping his corporeal form just long enough that she lost her grip. Then he was back.

Pacifica blinked. “Did he just disappear?”

Mabel shrugged, straightening back up. “He does that sometimes.”

Pacifica nodded slightly but appreciatively. “That’s not a bad trick, kid. I wish _I_ could do that, sometimes.”

Horace turned around; he stayed seated on the floor, but now he was at least facing her. “It’s cool when I do it on purpose,” he admitted with a shy smile. “But it happens when I don’t want it to, too.” His smile wavered. “And I can’t leave the house. Ever.”

“Oh, man.” Pacifica wrinkled her nose before exchanging looks with the twins. “No, you’re totally right, that’s not worth the trade-off. How long have you been stuck here?”

“Ninety-four years,” he answered, studying her from the floor. His cheeks took on a little bit of extra color, and his eyes darted back to the carpet by his feet. For a minute there I thought he was going to say something else, but he clammed up instead.

Pacifica looked to Dipper for help—not Mabel, I noticed, but Dipper. Interesting. He shrugged awkwardly before sitting down between Horace and Nicky on the floor. “We told her about how you died,” he said gently. “She wants to help. Talk to her. She doesn’t bite.” A quick glance up at Pacifica showed a flash of humor. “Usually.”

She tossed her hair, her eyes displaying a gleam of mischief. “Oh, I’d never put my mouth on _anything_ unsanitary. I’d just pay someone to do it for me.”

“So you don’t want a brownie?” Mabel, who had slipped into the kitchen after Horace shrugged her off, now had a baked good in each hand. One of them was half-eaten. She held out the other.

“Um…okay.” Pacifica accepted it, taking a dainty bite off the corner before taking a seat carefully on the floor next to Dipper. “They told me that my great-grandpa hit you with his car,” she said, tipping her head as she tried to get Horace to look her in the face. “I’m really sorry. My family is kind of the worst.”

Horace glanced up long enough to smile, then back down to the carpet. “You seem nice.”

“Ha,” Pacifica answered. “Only because you don’t _know_ me.” But she seemed pleased by the compliment anyway. “Dipper says his uncle’s got some kind of _spell_ that’ll fix you?”

“It’s not a _spell,_ really,” Dipper began. “And we d—”

“I wasn’t talking to you,” she dismissed him, focusing on Horace. “Are you really a _ghost_? We used to have a ghost at my house, but you’re…different.”

“Cause he’s not chasing you with an axe or trying to turn everyone into wood, you mean?” Dipper muttered.

“No, it’s because he’s totes adorbes, right Paz?”

Another smile tugged at the corner of Pacifica’s mouth. “You’re different,” she repeated to Horace. “And if I give you some of my blood, you can use it to…what, not be a ghost anymore?”

He nodded bashfully. “That’s what we’re trying to do.”

She hesitated. “When are you _doing_ this spell? Can I be here for it?”

“We need the other ingredients first,” Nicky volunteered, deciding to join the conversation. “It won’t be for a few more months.”

Pacifica waited. This clearly hadn’t answered her question.

Shyly, Horace looked up at her. He blushed and nodded. “Yeah. You can be here. It’s okay with me.”

No one asked if it was okay with _me_. No one had even acknowledged I was in the damn room. But I didn’t want to interrupt. This was important, and I wanted to see how these young people dealt with it on their own.

“It’s not fair,” Mabel sulked quietly. “ _We_ don’t get to be here for it!”

“ _We_ have school in April,” Dipper pointed out.

“We have spring break the first week!” she protested. “And I want to be here for it!”

“Teagan can’t _choose_ when she’s having the baby,” he reminded her.

“Wait, _what_?” Pacifica demanded, her gaze shooting my way for the first time. “What does a _baby_ have to do with it?”

“Placenta is one of the other ingredients,” I told her, trying not to feel awkward about discussing this with a total stranger. I didn’t mention that placenta was the family-friendly version of the ingredient. The whole idea of giving birth at _home_ , at my age, was frankly terrifying and I was trying not to think about it. But given all the weird stuff involved in this birth (luck, glowing, time travel, to name just the big ones) as well as what we planned to do with the afterbirth, our house was probably _safer_ than the hospital.

“Gross,” said Pacifica, crossing her arms and making a face at Mabel. “You didn’t tell me _that_ part.”

“I don’t know _you_ were going to get an invite!” Mabel retorted.

“Mabel…” Dipper warned.

“No, no, let her talk.” Pacifica flapped her hand at him. “It’s not _my_ problem if she’s jealous. _I’m_ doing you a _favor_.”

Rather than taking this as a challenge, Mabel deflated. “I’m sorry, Pacifica,” she sighed. “I _am_ jealous. I just wish I could do something to help.”

The other girl actually patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. “I get it. Kind of. How much blood are you going to _need_ , exactly?”

Dipper had the answer to that one. “Not much,” he assured her. “About a teaspoon.”

“A _teaspoon_?” she repeated warily. “I thought you just needed to prick my finger!”

“Don’t worry, we’re not going to cut you or anything,” Dipper told her with a nervous smile. “Grunkle Ford will be there, he’ll do it with a syringe.”

Pacifica bit her lower lip. “He’s the smart one?”

“He’s a genius,” Nicky assured her. “And a scientist.”

She looked back to Horace again. “And this is really gonna help him?”

“Totally!”

“We hope so.”

Pacifica Northwest sighed. “Alright, fine. I’ll come by and bleed for your weird little experiment. In four months.” She turned her attention to the tv screen. “Oh, you have this too? Since I’m here, I might as well kick your butts. Do you have a fourth controller?”

Nicky confirmed that they did.

For the next hour, the six of them took turns passing the four controllers around. Pacifica actually seemed to be enjoying herself, judging by what I could hear from the kitchen as I prepped lasagna. Even Dave loosened up and started chatting and shit-talking after a little while. Listening to it was kind of nice.

Pacifica look her leave at five o’clock, about twenty minutes before Stan and Ford finally made it home. They were excited (well, Ford was excited) to tell us about the herd of plaidypus they’d found (well, Ford had found). The job of capturing and microchipping some of the creatures for future study had required both of men. There had, apparently, been some young ones. The mother had gotten defensive. Ford had been bitten, but it clearly wasn’t that serious—Stan couldn’t stop laughing about it.

We cleaned up and had dinner. The kids filled their uncles in on Pacifica’s visit. Now that Dave knew the most popular girl in school didn’t hate him, this entire thing was suddenly a wonderful idea. Mabel said it had been really nice to see her again, and Dipper admitted that it had been. Nicky said she was okay. Horace was strangely quiet.

“You okay there, Ace?” Stan asked near the end of the meal. “You got your enemy, I figured you’d be all hyped up.”

“She’s not my enemy,” Horace whispered into his plate. “She’s beautiful.”

Stan and Nicky both groaned. Mabel clapped a hand to her chest, and I very nearly did the same. Dipper shook his head knowingly. “She’s fifteen, buddy. You’re not even a teenager. Take it from me, don’t waste your energy.”

“But she’s so perfect!” Horace finally looked up, and there was definitely a look in his eyes that I hadn’t seen before. “And she talked to me!”

Dipper shook his head, seeing—or else remembering from personal experience—that arguing wouldn’t do any good. He was too far gone. 

“And,” added Horace primly, “she’s fifteen, but _I’m_ a hundred and five.”

“Yeah,” Stan laughed, nearly choking on his water, “you’re a regular cradle-robber there, Ace.”

*

Grave-robbing was fun.

It was early March. The snow had melted and the ground was starting to thaw. I looked like I was going to explode at any minute, but still had another six weeks to go. We’d had two more ultrasounds, and Little Pines continued to be healthy and grow at the proper rate. Despite the radiating pain in my back and slight swelling in my breasts, I was feeling pretty good. It had been months since I’d had a red light, and everything I needed at the grocery store was always on sale. I’d interviewed for the school secretary job last week, and the Principal reminded me forcibly of my mother; we hit it off like a house afire. Soos and Melody’s wedding was set for mid-June, and of course they were planning to do it _at_ the Mystery Shack. Stan was going to be the best man. Everything was going wonderfully.

Well, almost everything. I wouldn’t describe surreptitiously digging around the half-frozen soil of an almost-hundred-year-old grave in the middle of the night while eight months pregnant as “wonderful.” Interesting, certainly. And to be fair, Stan was doing the bulk of the digging. Dave and Nicky were also knee-deep in the dirt, destroying their fingernails and clothes as they groped around with smaller spades. I mostly just stood there providing light and keeping a lookout. What we were going to _say_ if someone decided to investigate the cemetery right now, I hadn’t the faintest idea. The truth, probably. Sheriff Blubbs might even accept the truth. But I’d rather avoid that if I could.

Stan paused in his work, wiping his brow with his sleeve and taking several deep breaths. We’d worn out coats out here, since it was the middle of the night in March, but he’d gotten sweaty and removed his twenty minutes ago. “Want me to take a turn?” I asked. I hated being useless.

He gave me _look_. I sighed and sat down in the dirt at the edge of the grave instead. “Yeah, yeah, I know.” He was convinced letting me do any physical labor at this point would send me into _real_ labor. It was very annoying. Luckily, he was still willing to let me cook and buy groceries. (And take it from behind. It seemed my being huge wasn’t as much of a turn-off for him as we’d anticipated.)

The ground was still cold, and I immediately regretted sitting down. I looked around furtively for any sign of passing traffic, but this was the oldest graveyard in Gravity Falls, and it was on the quieter side of town. We had finally found Horace’s grave about a month ago, a little flat marker set into the ground. We wouldn’t have seen it if there had been more snow at the time, and the lettering on it was faded with age. _Horace Allen Holmes. 7-7-1910 – 3-28-1921._ There was no extra message, no decoration, nothing fancy. But right next to it were markers reading _Nancy Caroline Holmes_ and _George Joseph Holmes_ , so at least he hadn’t been alone here. Hopefully we didn’t accidentally dig up one of them, instead; I knew graves shifted over time.

“This sucks,” Dave grumbled, wiping his dirt-encrusted hands off on his dirty jeans. I was inclined to agree. We were _all_ inclined to agree.

“We’re doing it for Horace,” Nicky said stubbornly. No one was going to argue with that, either.

I pulled up some music in my phone, playing it at a low volume. It was a mix of the classic tunes that Stan and I enjoyed, and the modern crap Nicky and Dave seemed to favor. It kept everyone pacified for a little while. Stan started shoveling again. I gave Nicky a break and took a turn with the small spade until Little Pines started doing a tango and I had to rest. I continued to keep a look out, even though with our luck it was pretty unlikely that anyone was going to catch us. Everybody stopped for a drink of water. My hands were freezing, I couldn’t imagine how cold the guys’ were. And yes, they were complaining, but they were still here. I wished Horace could see it, so he’d know how important he was to all of us.

Finally, after several hours’ work, Stan’s shovel hit something. Dave and Nicky hurried to scrape away the surrounding dirt more carefully, like archeologists. I even passed down a toothbrush. The first thing they uncovered was a rotted piece of wood which disintegrated in Dave’s hand as he exclaimed in disgust. I climbed down to help, trying not to think about what I was actually doing. I’d thought we’d be digging up an actual coffin, but it was mostly dirt. There were more old bits of wood, and a few pieces of what I thought were bone but fell apart when I grabbed them. No flesh, no smell. I raked my fingers through the loose soil, massaging it away from anything that felt remotely solid. I found quite a few small rocks that way, and a few little pieces of metal. Stan found a couple teeth, and Nicky found a chunk of what looked like spine.

We decided that was good enough. I took the items from them, staring at them in my glowing palm. Was this all that was left of Horace’s physical form? I couldn’t see _how_ this was going to be enough to help give him a new one, even with luck. But I held on to them like they were the most important thing in the world, anyway.

We must have made quite the tableau as we filled the grave back in. A couple of dirt-coated teenage boys. A heavyset man with brawny arms and grey hair. A seriously pregnant lady giving off enough dayglo yellow light to make all of it easily visible. It was entirely possible, I realized, that a few cars _had_ gone by in the distance, and just decided it wasn’t something they wanted to mess with. _Never mind all that_ was the town’s motto, after all.

Horace was awake, corporeal, and waiting when we got home. All four of us stood in the living room with him, shedding dirt, and I held out the pieces we’d retrieved, tipping them into his cupped palms.

“Can you tell if they’re yours?” Nicky asked in a hushed voice.

“I…” Horace’s color wavered, like a bad tv connection. He went nearly white, then nearly technicolor, back to grey, and then normal again. He did not, however, become any less solid; the tokens stayed securely in his hands. “Yes,” he told us firmly. “They’re mine.” He stared down at them, poking the teeth around his palm. “This is weird.”

“No kidding.” Dave stretched and fanned a yawn. “I’m going to go take a shower.”

“Don’t use all the hot water!” Nicky warned. “The rest of us are dirty, too.”

“Ugh, I won’t!” Dave started up the stairs.

“You always do!” Nick called after him. “Stan, when we buy a new house, we’re going to get a _giant_ water heater, right?”

“Assuming we _can_ buy a new house,” I reminded him, casting a glance at Horace as he continued to study his bone fragments.

“We will,” Nicky said confidently. “I know it’s gonna work.”

“You _know,_ do ya?” Stan asked, groaning faintly as he dropped onto the sofa. “Hey Ace, you’ll wanna give those back to your mom. Let her put them someplace safe.”

He could have objected, I suppose, but he passed them back to me without question. Then he wrapped his arms around me in a tight and unexpected hug. “Thanks,” he told me, tears in his eyes. “For all of this. I love you.”

I smoothed his hair (not that it ever stayed that way) and kissed the top of his head. “We love you, too, you know.”

“Yeah, and don’t forget how grateful you are, when you’re changing dirty diapers for us in a couple months,” Stan teased, ruffling his hair and effectively undoing what I’d just done.

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Don’t even think about it! I won that bet fair and square!”

“You won that bet ‘cause the baby’s a good luck charm!”

“Doesn’t matter. You bet me the first month of dirty diapers and you lost.”

“I don’t want to change a _girl’s_ diapers.” Horace flinched. “That’d be weird.”

“Oy vey,” Stan muttered, raking his hands through his own hair. Little pieces of graveyard fell out.

I released Horace, kissing Stan on the cheek. “Oy vey indeed. Come on, if we share a shower right now, we might still get some hot water. Horace, come upstairs, love. It’s _way_ past bedtime.”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday.”

“Still past bedtime.”

“Nicky and Dave aren’t going to bed.”

“Because they’re washing off your grave, bud. When they’re done, they’re going to bed too. You can go read in your room till then.”

“But I’m hungry!”

“You are not!”

“I _am_! Touching my bones made me hungry!”

I turned my eyes to the ceiling, searching for patience. “Alright, fine. Have a quick snack, then turn off the lights on your way up. The rest of us are cleaning up and heading to bed.”

“Okay,” Horace conceded. I wondered if he really _was_ hungry. That was almost spooky.

“Night, Ace,” Stan mumbled on his way up the steps.

“Night, Dad,” Horace said to his back. When we turned to look in surprise, he flashed a quick, embarrassed smile and disappeared into the kitchen.

“He just called me Dad,” Stan said, holding onto the railing and scratching the back of his neck with a filthy hand.

“I noticed.” I moved up a step and kissed him on the lips. “You better get used to it.”

“Yeah, but…I…huh.”

“He’s been calling me Mom for months now,” I pointed out, taking him by the hand and leading him the rest of the way up to our bathroom.

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“….cause it is.”

“Stupid, stubborn man,” I smiled, holding his face and running my thumbs along his prickly cheeks.

“I’m not ready for this,” he complained. His hands still fit around the small of my back when we were standing face to face, but it was a stretch.

“No one ever is,” I told him with a smile.

Little Pines did a pirouette.


	9. Chapter 9

“What the hell is that?” I asked, staring at the monstrosity in the corner of our bedroom.

Stan’s broad grin faltered. “It’s a crib!”

I bit my lower lip. On the one hand, I didn’t want to hurt Stan’s feelings, and Little Pines seemed resistant to nearly all threats to her well-being. But on the other hand… “It looks like a death trap.”

“What’re you talking about?” Stan slapped what I guess you’d call a railing, if you were feeling generous. It swayed. “I put it together myself! Sturdy as a rock.”

“That’s so sweet of you, honey. But are you sure you didn’t…um, miss anything?”

He stood back and surveyed the crib. It was like we weren’t even looking at the same thing. “Looks right to me. Mom had one just like this for Oscar when she was watching him for Sherman and Cassie.”

That seemed unlikely to me. They used to build things _sturdier_ back in the 60s and 70s. I tried to change the subject. “Did you ever help her?”

“With Oscar? Nah. Mom doted on him, you know? First grandkid. Me and Ford, we were busy with school and the Stan ‘o War.” I really liked the fact that he could talk about those times without his voice getting hoarse and his eyes staring far away into a place I couldn’t follow. Maybe the old wounds would never _fully_ heal, but they’d healed some. That in itself was a gift.

I let a smirk tug my cheek upward. “You were busy with school?” I repeated, utterly deadpan.

Stan grinned sheepishly. “I still had to _go_ to school! Most of the time.”

Well, couldn’t argue with that. I almost wished I could, though, because that crib was still sitting in our room. “So where did you find this thing?” I tried to keep the judgement out of my voice.

“Second-hand shop downtown,” he answered without any hint of shame. “I even _paid_ for it! Twenty bucks.”

He’d paid too much.

“Had to take it apart to get it into the car, though,” he went on. “Just got done putting it back together!”

Had he ‘taken it apart’ with a chainsaw? I made myself go take a closer look. “The wood _is_ beautiful,” I admitted, looking for something to praise. As far as I could tell, it had been smoothed but never painted. “Is that cherry? Or mahogany?”

“Beats me,” he answered cheerfully. “Told you it was nice!”

I crouched down to inspect the lower corners and wound up overbalancing. That happened a lot these days. I sat down hard and stayed that way, lying back on the thankfully clean carpet. Little Pines was asleep right now, but she was also almost full size.

“Need a hand there, sweetie?” Stan asked, looking down at me.

“No. I’m just going to lay here.”

“Okay.” He eased himself slowly to a sitting position beside me.

“Can we have Soos take a look?” I asked, nodding toward the crib. “He could make sure all the screws are in tight enough.”

“You don’t trust me?” Crap, I’d hurt his feelings.

I pushed myself up on my elbows and smiled. “Of course I do. And it’s beautiful. But you can never be too safe with old furniture. I’d rather double check than risk it falling apart when she’s in there.”

He flinched at the very idea. “You really think that’d happen?”

_Yes._ “No, but I’m not taking any chances.”

Stan leaned back next to me, mimicking my position. “Yeah, okay, have him take a look next time he’s over. Just to be safe.”

I kissed his shoulder, since it was the only part of him I could reach. “When’s that going to be?”

“Saturday, remember? Baby shower.”

I’d been trying to forget. I didn’t want a bunch of people fawning over me. We could already afford everything we needed for the baby. I would just as soon have melted into the floor or gone non-corporeal like Horace. But Mabel had suggested to Soos, and he and Melody had taken it as gospel, and Stan was absolutely on board with anything that equated to him getting things for free. I had managed to convince them to keep it small. Our house. Immediate family, plus Soos and Mel. Mabel and Dipper on video chat. My parents.

My parents, for whom this would be the first visit to Oregon. I was dreading it. They were supposed to be staying five days, but Mom had already made intimations about staying until after the baby was born. I was going to have to find a good way to talk them out of it, because I didn’t think I could handle the stress of my parents attempts to help on _top_ of having a newborn baby. I patted my swollen midsection woefully. _Come on, little one. You’re my good luck charm. Get me out of this!_

Stan, clearly, could read my thoughts on my face. He patted my hand in sympathy. “It’ll be fine, Teegs. It’s just a party!

“Meh meh meh, mee,” I grumbled, curling my lip. “Meh meh meh meh-meh.”

Stan had the nerve to laugh.

*

“Knock knock, anyone home?”

“Grandpa!” Nick wasn’t young enough to go flying across the room to hug his grandparents anymore, but an enormous grin still lit up his face when they let themselves in the front door. “Dave!” He ran to the bottom of the steps, cupping a hand to his mouth and bellowing at the top of his lungs. “They’re here!”

 _I_ wasn’t too old to hug my parents. I never would be. I jumped up from the sofa at once (nearly overbalancing yet again) and waddled quickly over as they removed their coats. “You made it!” I observed happily, hugging first my father, then my mother.

“Well of _course_ we did,” my mom said, holding me gently by the shoulders and looking me over. “We’ve missed you, love!”

“About time we saw your home,” my dad agreed, surveying the place. “And Nicky!” Nick had returned from the base of the stairs to stand beside me. My dad pulled him into a hug, too. “How’ve you been?”

“Okay,” Nick answered in the typical teenager fashion. “Ready for spring break.”

“What’s that, about a week off?” Dad asked. Nick nodded. “You guys doing anything special?”

Mom obviously wanted to hug Nicky as well, but she was letting my dad have his turn first. Instead, she walked further into the living room and spotted my husband. “Stan!” She stepped up to the sofa, but didn’t attempt to pull him into a hug. “We can finally meet in person!” They’d had a handful of video chats by over the past two years, and they heard about him whenever I called, so he wasn’t really a novelty at this point. But it _was_ their first time meeting in the flesh.

Stan made himself get to his feet, where he offered a very awkward handshake. “It’s, uh, good to have you here.” He went silent, clearly out of his element.

Dave came in to rescue him. “Hi! You’re here!” He walked right up and hugged my mom. The last time he’d done that, he’d still been shorter than her. “How are you?”

She turned her attention away from Stan immediately. “ _Dave_! You’re looking wonderful! You’re getting so tall! And look at your hair!”

“You look good too, Grandma.” He smiled and glanced over at Nicky and my dad. “Hi Grandpa!”

The greetings and embraces continued. I left them to it for a minute, sinking gratefully back down onto the sofa to watch. My hand found Stan’s, and I squeezed it. Little Pines started doing a mambo. She was big enough now that nobody needed to put their hand on my stomach to know what she was up to—it was visible from across the room! All I had to do was “Mom,” and both my parents turned to get their first impression of their youngest grandchild.

“Would you look at that!” Mom laughed, sitting down on the other side of me and putting out a hand. “She _does_ have a lot of energy!”

“She’s a dancer,” Stan stated firmly. No matter how many times he said that line, it never lost the sense of pride and conviction. I was starting to wonder whether he felt like he’d missed his true calling in life. Were Daddy-Daughter dances still a thing? I spared a moment to picture him cutting a rug with Little Pines in five years or so. He’d be in his suit from work, maybe with a regular tie instead of the one he wore to the Shack. She’d be in a dirty, probably chocolate-smeared dress, hair ribbons coming loose, rip in her pantyhose, shrieking with laughter as he spun her around.

I was so glad we’d decided to have this child. So very glad.

“Guh, it’s so creepy!” Dave remarked, averting his eyes from my stomach. He had expressed this opinion before. I knew he’d love his little sister once she was out in the open—but pregnancy, in his mind, was a freak show. “It’s like watching that alien movie or something.”

“Hey, you were a little alien like this once, too.” Mom smiled, unperturbed. “I remember feeling _you_ move in there.” She stopped touching the baby and hugged me instead. “I’m so glad we got to be here for this one, too!”

My smile felt genuine as I hugged her back. “Well, we were seriously overdue to have you out here. I’m sorry.”

“You weren’t kidding about travel time, though,” Dad remarked with a tired laugh. “Detroit to Salem with two layovers, then that little puddle-jumper to Redmond.”

“And then we had to rent a car and drive three hours,” Mom agreed, flopping back into the cushions of the sofa. “Next time we should just save money and drive the whole way.”

“Whatever possessed you to take a vacation out here in the first place?” Dad followed up, shaking his head.

“It was cheap.” I shrugged. “And I wanted to do something different.”

Dad put his hand on my shoulder. They knew I’d been in a bad way after my first husband died. Keeping the family vacations going had been a form of escapism, for me. He was probably regretting bringing it up at all..

But I had a new life now. One that I liked. I smiled at Dad, letting him know it was alright. “Hey, look where that vacation got me, though! I’ve got a wonderful husband.” I turned my smile to Stan. “The boys like it out here. And the family keeps growing! Oh, speaking of which. Where’s Horace, honey?”

“I’m here,” Horace said timidly from around the corner of the room.

“Good!” I answered. “Come in here and meet my mom and dad!”

He’d sounded nervous, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but he walked in looking fully solid. He tried to hide behind Nick’s shoulder, though, as my parents got up to greet him.

“So this is Horace,” my mom smiled, trying not to pressure him. I had told them that our town was weird, that the house had a ghost, that I glowed in the dark. But I’d never been quite sure they believed me. For all I knew, they secretly thought Horace was just a neighborhood kid with parents who didn’t pay enough attention to him. “It’s nice to meet you! I’m Roxanne.”

Knowing Horace the way I did, I could read his face and know he was slightly let down at her not instructing him to call her _Grandma_. He smiled shyly anyway, especially when Nick put a brotherly arm on his shoulder. “Nice to meet you, too.”

“How you doing?” Dad asked, sticking his hand out.

Horace took his calloused palm, putting some strength into the handshake. “Not too bad. Do. Um. What do you think of Gravity Falls so far?”

Aw, he knew just the right way to greet people. Dave jumped to join this subject immediately. “Yeah, how much of the town did you see on your way in?”

“You woulda passed the Shack,” Stan observed, glad to have a subject he knew his way around. “We gotta get you out there tomorrow, take you on the grand tour.”

I raised my eyebrows warningly. “Stan. Do not charge them.”

“I wasn’t going to!” He lied fairly convincingly. Dad laughed like he thought the whole thing was a joke, which was a relief.

“We did pass some signs,” Mom admitted. “I’d love to see it tomorrow, but right now I could really use your restroom.” She looked around, trying to choose a likely candidate. “Dave? Will you show me the way?”

She’d have plenty of time to corner the rest of them and catch up later.

*

The rest of that night was unremarkable. My parents were understandably tired from the long trip, so they were happy to have dinner and retire to the guest room (what I thought of as Mabel’s room) for the night. The morning after that we let them have the run of the house while the rest of us went to school and work. Well, not _entirely_ the run of the house—Horace was there, after all. And despite the slow start, my parents must have done _something_ right because by the time I got home he was calling them Grandma and Grandpa after all. Maybe it had something to do with my mom showing him pictures of me, Dave, and Nicky as babies. Maybe it had something to do with my dad playing video games with him and losing for two hours straight. Maybe it was just their desire to learn about a sweet kid their daughter loved.

As promised, Stan did take them out and give them an after-hours tour of the Mystery Shack from the founder himself. I would have gone as well, but I wanted to make them a nice dinner. I also figured that forcing Stan into spending time with them without me around might help them get to know each other a little better. There might be some awkward conversations and more awkward pauses, but at least this way they’d work through it themselves instead of me jumping to the rescue.

So I made roast chicken, and homemade dressing, and potatoes, and green beans, and a simple cobbler for dessert. My feet and back were killing me by the time I made it through all the prep work, so I sat down while things boiled. The second I did, Little Pines decided it was time to have a dance party. I lay down on the linoleum floor, watching my distended stomach jump, shake, and ripple, and listened to the sounds of the house. If I listened hard, I could hear the sounds of Dave practicing some guitar licks up in his room. Nicky was doing his homework in the living room while watching tv with Horace; I could hear their occasional commentary over the sounds of some awful tween movie.

Everything was going to change soon. I was excited to have the baby out of me, yes—both because I wanted to see her and hold her and love her, and because I was sick of being pregnant. But once she was born, the routine I’d cultivated over the past two years went to hell. I’d have a baby stealing my attention, and sometimes stealing Stan’s as well. I’d be home instead of at work, at least until I started my job at the school in August; my last day at Barrels and Crates would be next week. The spell (that’s what it was in my mind, despite Dipper and Ford’s protests) to give Horace flesh would either work or it wouldn’t, and we’d have to deal with the fallout of that. If it worked, we’d be shopping for a new house. If it didn’t, we’d be remodeling. And who knew how the luck that seemed tied to our baby would manifest once she was out in the open.

Everything was going to change.

But like I’d said to Stan late last summer, at least we’d be facing the changes together.

My girl eventually went back to sleep, and the timer for the potatoes went off. I struggled back to my feet, cursing my idiocy for lying down in the first place, and resumed cooking. Naturally when my parents came back in with Stan fifteen minutes later, they told me they would happily have ordered take-out, and what was I doing spending so long on my feet. I told them I wanted the fucking chicken and if they wanted something else they should have said it sooner. Everyone but my mom decided it might be best to leave me alone for a while. She was brave enough to stick around and tell me about their tour of the Mystery Shack. It mellowed my mood to see the way she smiled as she recalled certain “attractions.”

“He’s a lot smarter than he lets on, isn’t he,” she observed, mashing potatoes for me as I checked the temp on the chicken.

“Yeah.” A smile stretched my cheeks as I answered. “He’s pretty brilliant, in his own way.”

Mom laughed through her nose. “He’s not much like Frank, is he.”

My grin broadened. “Not a bit! But he’s a good man.”

She set down the masher to put her arm around me in a half-hug. “You and the boys are clearly happy. Whatever he’s doing, it’s working!”

“Thanks, Mom.” Good, the bird was at temperature. I took it out of the oven and hugged her back. “I’m glad you’re here.”

In that moment, I meant it.

Two days later, I was ready for her to leave. I had endured the baby shower by then, and Dad had distracted Stan while Soos reassembled the crib into something I felt comfortable about my daughter sleeping in (my husband failed to see any difference whatsoever). The shower itself wasn’t quite as painful as I’d imagined. They’d kept it small and restricted the games to things like baby food tasting and seeing who could come up with the most terrible name for the baby. (Aurica Allisandra, despite Mabel seeming quite earnest about it as a suggestion, joined Stanlisha and Fartbreath on my list of names not to ever use.)

Mabel had sent a hand-stitched onesie with a teakettle on it. The boys had bought some toys and board books. Soos and Mel had gotten us a stroller, and my parents had spent far too much on bottles and tiny outfits and diapers. Ford had ordered us a highchair and a totally adorable plush possum. Stan got all choked up—at the sentimentality, the amount everyone had spent, or both—and went to go “put all this stuff up with the crib.”

But now that all the meetings and excitement were over, I was stuck trying to get through my last week at the place I’d worked for a year and a half while heavily pregnant and with my parents visiting. They were trying to make things easier on me, I knew they were. And I appreciated that. I was glad they liked Horace and Stan, that they’d gotten to feel the baby, that they were getting quality time with Dave and Nick. It was just that I was _tired_ , and since I hadn’t spent much time with them since moving to Oregon, my instincts were telling me I had to spend every waking minute of their visit making up for it.

Fortunately, my parents weren’t stupid. They could _see_ that they weren’t helping me relax, and they graciously took the hint. They promised to come back in a few months, despite the travel time. They made _me_ promise to do regular video chats in the coming months so they could see their granddaughter, and even more regular updates in the coming weeks so they’d know how I was surviving the end stretch. I cried when they left. And I was relieved to see them go.

Three more weeks, if everything went according to plan. All there really was to do now was wait.

*

“Are you sure we have time?”

Stan checked his watch. “There’s no way he’ll get in for three hours, at least. Heh. Not unless he’s invented a quicker way to get here than driving!”

I raised my eyebrows. This was Ford we were talking about. I had no doubt that he could do exactly that, given the means and opportunity. But as far as we knew, he hadn’t. Yet. He’d told us he was renting a car at the airport again, and would be here with an hour or two to spare before dinner. It was currently one o’clock. That meant that aside from Horace minding his own business downstairs, we were alone in the house for another two hours. If Ford decided to magically turn up four hours earlier than he’d told us and teleported in on something—well, that was his funeral, wasn’t it.

I’d talked myself into it. “And Horace is definitely engrossed?”

He shrugged. “Seemed to be. He knows better than to walk into rooms without knocking now, anyhow.” Yeah, one or two painfully awkward incidents had been enough to drive that one home. Just because you _can_ float through a door without opening it doesn’t mean you _should_ , Horace.

“Excellent.” I pulled his head closer to mine again and went back to kissing him. Being intimate had gotten a little _less_ intimate and involved a little more creativity in the past few months, but some things were exactly the same as always. The smell of him. The softness of his lips contrasted by the coarseness of his perpetual stubble. His taste, and the way his tongue pushed against mine just so. The way his hands always found my waist, and mine always found their way into his hair. The pure, intoxicating chemistry we shared, set loose to create an exciting reaction.

We were lying on the bed side by side. Ordinarily he would have been on top of me, but a certain unborn child got in the way and made that impossible. Lying on my side wasn’t bad, if it meant I could still make out with my husband. Besides, it made my left breast spill sideways out of my bra, which seemed to please Stan when he stopped kissing me for long enough to look.

I tugged his shirt upward, and he removed it for me. I ran my hands eagerly over his broad back and shoulders, kissing his chest through the dense forest of grey curls there. I’d always loved his chest hair. I kissed it again, more sensuously, bringing my fingers around to stroke his chest as well. Stan generously returned the favor, slipping his hands inside my bra to massage me. I groaned in pleasure, bringing my mouth back up to his. One of his hands left my breast, moving over the steep curve of my stomach to venture down the front of my maternity pants.

The discovery that he was still attracted to me while I was pregnant had felt like nothing short of a miracle to me. I’d been tempted to attribute it to Little Pines’ good luck, but Stan insisted I was still hot “even when you’re blown up like a balloon, Teegs! Okay, not a balloon. A balloon would have some give to it, you know? This thing’s hard as a rock!” His lack of eloquence convinced me he meant it, and we’d spent the last two months finding inventive ways to get around the baby and get him inside me. As much as I wanted to look him in the face and as much as I hated the name, doggy style was the most effective.

I let him get all my clothes off before I attempted to roll over. Hell, I even got most of _his_ clothes off while lying on my back and side. I took an extra minute to just lay in his arms, kissing him and touching him everywhere I could reach. Maybe it sounds romantic. It felt filthy. And I’m sure, had Ford chosen that minute to somehow turn up in our bedroom, it would have looked ridiculous.

But he didn’t, and the kissing and caressing escalated to the point where I couldn’t stand the tension anymore. My hand was on him, one of his hands was on my chest…and a cramp seized me.

“Ugh.” I took both my hands back, holding them at the base of my belly and pulling away from Stan.

He stopped groping me and put his hand on my stomach instead. “She kick you again?” She’d landed one square on my bladder the other day, and I’d peed myself a little bit. This was different, though. I shook my head. The look of concern on Stan’s face deepened. “You okay?”

I nodded, still pressing my hands against my skin. It felt like period cramps, or indigestion. I’d had it after eating earlier, too. “Sorry. Shitty timing. I probably just had too much for lunch.”

He pulled my head up against his chest, gently massaging my back now. “Sweetie, you hardly had _anything_ for lunch.”

“All my internal organs are pushed way up.” I shrugged, but after that I let my shoulders relax under the pressure of his touch. “There’s not _room_ for much food in there anymore!” I sighed, relaxing even more. His warm, calloused hands on my skin were wonderful. And the wave of indigestion seemed to be receding as quickly as it had come. “That’s _nice_ , thank you.”

“Hey, sure thing.” He kept going, and I left my head against his chest. If I shifted just a little, I could hear his heart beating. I turned my head and kissed that spot. For a second, his hands stopped moving on my upper back. Then they started up again. Experimentally, I kissed his chest again. Same reaction. I tipped my head back, looking up at him. His eyes told me that we could still pick up where we’d left off. I shifted upward more, rubbing my bare breasts against him as I kissed the soft at the side of his throat.

When I made it up to his lips, he kissed me back with gusto, and we resumed making out like horny teenagers. Being pregnant made my nipples more sensitive than ever, and the lightest pinch from Stan sent sweet waves of pleasure through me. He kept doing it until I was gasping against him, pushing his hand between my legs so he could feel how much I wanted him. I liked kissing him, liked moving my hand gently up and down his length, but I needed more. “Stan.” I kept my moan pitched low, almost a whisper. “Please. Please, I want you in me.” I gasped again, unintentionally emphasizing the urgency.

He nodded, helping me roll over onto my hands and knees. He could tell through his breathing and the swiftness of his movements that he needed this, too. I couldn’t really reach between my legs to help position him, but he didn’t exactly need a lot of help at this point, either. Three confident pushes and he was in me all the way, leaving me groaning into the pillow. Everything was so sensitive, and this position put him so deep, and his hands on my hips felt like heaven. Perfect, erotic, inescapable heaven. I had one orgasm right on top of another, and he wasn’t even going that _fast_. The only thing holding me back from screaming my ecstasy was the knowledge that Horace was somewhere downstairs, hopefully oblivious to what we were up to. Pregnant sex was seriously underrated.

Or not. Another cramp intruded right in the middle of another climax, chopping off my moan and seizing up my movements. Oh shit. _Was_ it a cramp? It had been a long time, it was hard to be sure, but it almost felt like—

“What the hell?” Stan yelped, pulling out quickly. I felt the rapid trickle of liquid down the inside of my thigh. Not, I knew without looking, the same stuff that usually got on my thighs after sex.

Fuck.

I pushed myself over onto my back and sat partway up. I was still leaking; the damp spot between my legs was becoming saturated. _Fuck!_ The cramp (not a cramp, an early contraction) was still going, too. I held my stomach and lay back. “Get a towel.”

“What just happened?” Stan demanded. He had to know. I could see the fear in his eyes. But he asked anyway.

“That was my water breaking.” I was scared, too. I wanted to do this at the hospital, where the process would be familiar, sterile, handled by professionals. What if something went wrong? _Relax, Teagan. Nothing can go wrong. You’ve got Lady Luck herself in there. This will probably be the smoothest delivery in the history of childbirth._ Logically, I made a good point. But I was still scared.

Stan brought me towel, and I lifted my butt so he could slide it under me. Then I grabbed his hand and held onto it. The pain of the contraction was fading, but the cold slice of fear inside me wasn’t. He gripped me back just as hard. I tried to muster a smile. “It’ll be okay. Ford will be here in a few hours. And the baby’s lucky. I’ll be fine. We’ll both be fine.” At least she’d waited until the family member with some understanding of biology was on his way into town. I wasn’t sure if that was her luck, or us being smart enough to suggest Ford arrive early just in case this happened.

He nodded, looking lost. “Yeah. Yeah. Course you will!”

I needed to give him something to do, something proactive to keep him from panicking on me. I took a few deep breaths, martialing my thoughts. “We need to get dressed.” I actually managed a little laugh. “Or at least, you do.”

Stan started looking around the bed for his clothes. “You’re not gonna put _anything_ on?” I knew what he was thinking—even if they weren’t in the room, the kids were all going to be in the house pretty soon. And Pacifica. And Ford.

“Of course I’m going to put something on! I don’t want to deliver _naked_. I’m just trying to think.” I swallowed hard, took another deep breath. “Usually they give me a hospital gown. What do I wear for something like this? I sure as hell don’t want to put pants on, but I need something to move around the house in.”

Stan paused in pulling up his boxers to give me a skeptical look. “You’re gonna be moving around the house?”

“It’s supposed to help.” I shrugged. “And the contractions are going to come and go for a few hours.” The leaking had stopped. I started drying myself off with the edges of the towel. “Give me my bra and an old shirt you don’t care about. Maybe a t-shirt?” He didn’t wear them often, it was mostly Hawaiian prints, wife-beaters, and his suit. But I’d seen a few.

He pulled on own shirt and nodded. “Lemme look.” Good, that would keep him busy. I finished drying myself off and worked my way over to the edge of the bed so I could get up and find my clothes. In addition to my bra, I put my underpants back on for the time being. I waddled to our bathroom and got myself a small drink of water while I leaned against the sink. Now what? I checked the clock. Another hour still till Dave and Nicky got home. Did I tell Horace now, or wait till everyone was there? Now. This involved him in ways it didn’t involve my birth children. And I’d have Stan check in on Ford, see how close he was.

Stan pulled an old shirt out of his dresser. It looked old enough to be one of the ones I’d worn during my stay in 1989, but given it was a plain black t-shirt there was no knowing for sure. I pulled it on, and it fell halfway down my thighs. Not fashionable, but comfortable, and close enough to decent. Good enough for me.

I went back to the bed and sat down on the edge of the mattress. Stan followed me, and I looked up at him. “You okay?”

“Peachy,” he said with so much confidence that I couldn’t even _pretend_ to believe him. I grabbed him around the middle and pulled him into a hug. I could feel the tension in him, the anxiety. I doubted I felt much better, but at least I’d been through _something_ like this before. Poor Stan, it was all new to him.

I released him from the hug so that I could pat the spot on the bed next to me. He sat. “We’ve gone through this. You know how it’s going to happen.”

He shook his head, slowly at first and then vigorously. “I know how it’s _s’posed_ to happen.”

Weirdly, his panic was making me calmer. “And that’s how it _will_ happen. Your kid is not going to spend thirty-nine weeks making everything go perfectly and then screw up her own arrival.”

He grabbed onto my hand again, looking at me with wide eyes. “What’m I s’posed to _do_ , Teegs? How do I…how do I help?”

No wonder they used to banish fathers to the waiting rooms of hospitals. “You’re going to call Ford and see where he’s at. You’re going to help me downstairs, and you’re going to stay with me as we tell Horace and wait for Dave and Nick. We’re going to distract ourselves, okay? And when I get another contraction, you’re going to let me wring the living shit out of your hand until it passes.”

He nodded, though I doubted he’d absorbed a single word I’d said. “Stan!” I sharpened my voice, trying to penetrate the fog of panic. His eyes focused on me. “Breathe. Slowly.” I did it myself, to show him. He copied me. I leaned into him, putting our faces close together. “It’s going to be okay. Nothing’s happening right now. We’re just going to be hanging around the house like usual. Okay? Now help me downstairs.”

He relaxed. Just fractionally, but it was enough. “I’m not _carrying_ you down, sweetheart.”

I almost laughed. “Good! At least one of us needs to be able to walk around later today, I wouldn’t want to throw your back out.” I brushed my lips over his cheek. “Just walk with me, that’s all.”

“Yeah. Okay. Sure thing.” He followed me out of the room, one hand close to my shoulder. We made it down the steps. That was enough walking for me. I sat down on the sofa.

Horace was at the other end of the sofa, and he gave me one of his sweet smiles when we came in the room. A _Ducktective_ rerun was playing on the tv, and but he had a handheld game in his hands. When we sat down, he actually paused it and looked up. I could see him taking in my weird change of clothes and the stress that was probably radiating off both of us. “What’s going on?”

I put a hand on my stomach. “Looks like it’s happening today.”

His eyes widened, just like Stan’s had, and he went very still. “She’s not due till Friday.”

I had to smile at that. “I told you babies don’t always come on time, buddy.”

“Yeah, but Dad, you said they usually come _late_!” He looked to Stan for confirmation.

Before he had to come up with an answer to that, I put an arm around Horace, reassuring him. Why did _I_ have to be the one to reassure everyone else? I was the one about to push a screaming eight-pound human out of me! _Because it’s what you do, Teagan._ “First babies usually do, but this is my third. Don’t worry, it doesn’t mean anything’s wrong.”

“I’m not ready.” He looked like he wanted to run but had nowhere to go.

“Right there with ya, Ace.”

Great. They were on the same page, how nice for them. Stan wasn’t ready to be a dad and Horace wasn’t ready to be alive and there was _plenty_ of time they could have figured that out prior to right now! I set my teeth as another contraction gripped me. It had only been what, ten, fifteen minutes since the last one? _Don’t you dare,_ I silently told my daughter. _You are waiting, damn it!_ I’m _not ready, either!_

“Are Dave and Nicky coming home?” Horace asked anxiously. He and Stan both stared at me for an answer.

“They can get home at their regular time,” I said tartly. “This will probably go on for hours.” I continued to grit my teeth, and the contraction passed. I took a deep breath and let it out. “Maybe you want to check in with Pacifica after school. See if she wants to come by and let us stick her with a needle later tonight.”

The mention of Pacifica was enough to temporarily distract him from his nerves. He flicked off his handheld and groped around the sofa cushions until he located his phone. How he’d gotten a picture of Pacifica Northwest I don’t know, but there was a shot of her looking beautiful and perfect in his contact list. That fact alone was enough to briefly take _my_ mind off _my_ anxiety. Puppy love was adorable. Dipper was right, he was too young, he’d never have a shot. But if we pulled this off he could at least go to school and meet some girls his own age to fall hopelessly in love with.

Speaking of which… “Why don’t you text Dipper and Mabel, too. You know they’ll want to know.”

“Okay!” His thumbs were already flying.

“You.” I returned my attention to Stan. “Call your brother. See how soon he can be here. He works for the government, he can break some speed limits.”

Still looking a little grey, Stan nodded, reached for his pocket, and promptly realized he didn’t have his phone on him. He looked utterly lost.

I took pity on him. “Bedside table. You haven’t used it yet today.” He _had_ a cell phone. Even knew how to text and was pretty good about keeping it on hand. But he wasn’t glued to it the way the younger generation was.

“Ah.” He nodded. “Thanks.” It took him a few more seconds to realize he actually needed to get up and go back upstairs to retrieve it. I took a few slow breaths and tried to focus on the tv. It almost worked. Above my head, I could hear the indistinct, sporadic sound of Stan’s voice through the floorboards. Good, the start and stop meant he was actually _talking_ to Ford, not just leaving a message.

I wondered if Ford was going to be any more useful than these two. On the one hand, he was a scientist. On the other hand, Stan had told me (and I’d seen nothing to prove him wrong) that Ford didn’t have a lot of experience with women’s bodies. Relying on him to help deliver our kid might not be the kindest way to introduce him to the wonders of female anatomy. He might go completely to pieces.

Nope, nope, not going to think about that. “What’s she saying?” I asked Horace, since I needed a distraction and he was continuing to text. “Is that still Pacifica?”

“No.” His thumbs were flying, so he was still solid, but his color was starting to fade. “Dipper now. He’s still at school but he says this lesson is—”

I cut him off with a gentle touch to the shoulder. “Don’t burn too much energy messaging, love. You’re going to want all your strength for tonight.”

He practically dropped the phone, solidness waxing and waning in his distress. “Pacifica says she’ll come over after school,” he said in a small voice. “I’m scared, Mom.”

“I know.” I pulled him into a hug and kissed his forehead.

“What if it doesn’t work?”

“Then we’ll stay here and remodel the house, and you’ll have a little sister.”

“What…what if it does work?” He fell silent for so long I thought he expected a real answer, but then it all came pouring out in a rush. “I’ve never lived anywhere besides this house. I know we need more space but this is all I know! I feel like if I leave, even if the spell works, I’ll just fade away! And Nicky says some of the kids at school are real jerks! And I won’t be in the same class as him, I won’t know _anyone_! And I’m going to have to _age_! I’ve seen everyone else deal with growing pains and, and hair, and voice changes, and pimples, and that gross stuff! And if I grow up then some day I’m going to have to leave all of you guys and I’m _scared_!”

“Oh, Horace, my sweet boy.” I rubbed his back soothingly, regardless of the way my hand kept slipping through it. “It’ll be okay, love. It’s normal to be scared of all that, I promise. Change is scary! But there’s going to be so much _great_ stuff you’ll be able to do, too. Think about that.”

He nodded, shedding tears that never fell to my shirt. “I’m trying. But what about the spell? How’s it going to _work_? Will it hurt?”

I had no answers on that front, so I tried to be honest and reassuring. “I don’t know, exactly. My guess is that it’ll be like a shot. Do you remember ever getting a shot?”

He thought hard. “I think so?”

Crap, so that analogy was no good. I tried again. “Well, it’ll…I think it’ll be a little bit like dying was. You know? Maybe it’ll hurt for a minute, but then it’ll be over and you’ll be something new.”

“Oh.” He went quiet, digesting that.

“You’re tough, Ace,” Stan told him, walking back into the room with a little more confidence than he’d left it. “One of the toughest kids I know.” He paused, thinking. “Maybe the toughest. And you know that’s saying something.” Horace nodded. “You survived _dying_ , kid. No way you need to be scared of _anything_.” He punched him in the shoulder. “You got this in the bag. Okay?”

Horace gave him a wavering smile. “Okay.” He glanced back to his phone, which had slipped between the sofa cushions again. “I have at least half an hour to rest up. I’m going to go read a book and be incorporeal, okay?”

“Good idea.” I smiled. He did us the favor of staying visible until he was on the steps, so that we’d know when he was gone. “Nice job, honey. Thank you.”

Stan sank down onto the sofa beside me. “No problem.”

“What’s the word?” I leaned into him, taking comfort just in his presence.

“He said he should be here by three-thirty, if the roads stay this clear.”

I nodded, impressed. “That’s a lot earlier than he said.”

“Yeah, well. I told him to get the lead out.”

“Thanks.” I smiled, taking his hand and interweaving our fingers. “You okay?”

“No,” he said at once. He glanced at me and rubbed the back of his neck. “I worry about you. Not being with a real doctor and all. And I worry about her.” He rested our linked hands on my giant stomach. “In there, she’s _safe_. Out here…” He spread his free hand wide, indicating it was anyone’s guess.

I smiled a little sadly at him. “There’s never going to be a day you _don’t_ worry about her, at least a little bit. You’re right, there’s no way to protect them from everything in the world. So you love them.”

He swallowed noticeably. “I wanna protect her,” he said stubbornly.

“And you will. You’ll protect her from so many things. Because you’ll love her.”

“Yeah, but—shit.” He broke off as I grimaced, dropping his hand and flattening both mine against my stomach again. This one was definitely stronger than the last one. It was manageable, but I spent the next minute lying on my side with my head in his lap, letting him smooth my hair while I took deep breaths.

It passed. “See?” I said shakily, rotating so I could look up at him. “That was exactly what I needed. You’ve got this, Stan.”

“Long as I have you,” he said hoarsely.

“I’ll be fine,” I told him. It was a lot easier to be convincing about it now that the pain had died down. “You’ve seen me in pain before. Is this _really_ any worse than when I almost died of hypothermia? Or when I almost burned up from the inside out?”

“A little.” He kept stroking my hair. “I didn’t love you then.”

True—he’d barely known me with the hypothermia, and we’d only been dating a week or two with the firefly changes. I reached my hand up to touch his face. “But those were both way more dangerous, too,” I pointed out. “You had no luck and no clue what you were doing. This time, we have both.”

“I guess.”

“Good. Then distract me, please. Let’s focus on something else.”

“Like what?”

“Anything else!” Literally anything. Even Horace crying had taken my mind off my own fears. “How about names? Can we talk about names now?”

He rubbed the back of his neck again. “Guess we probably better.”

I raised my eyebrows. “You have something in mind?”

For just a second, the stress fled away from his face, and he grinned at me. “Maybe.”


	10. Chapter 10

Dave and Nicky got home at 2:58. Pacifica arrived at 3:06. Ford joined us at 3:40 on the nose. My contractions were five minutes apart by then. The kids were alternating between hiding so they didn’t have to see me struggling with pain, and wanting to be there to help me. Stan, thankfully, was very good at letting them give me a quick hug or smile and then sending them off on an errand. He’d realized, I think, that worrying about them worrying was more than I could handle right now.

We retreated back to the bedroom, where somebody had thought to cover the bed with stacks of clean towels. Stan got me a drink of water while Ford organized various medical instruments that I couldn’t really focus on. Stan’s old t-shirt was soaked in sweat by then, and by the time he helped me remove my underwear I didn’t even care about Ford seeing me without them. He handled it like a pro, anyway, like I should have _known_ he would. Adjusted his glasses and measured carefully. Not ten centimeters yet. Fuck. I sent Stan down to check on the kids during one of my brief lulls, and Ford actually gave me his hand to hold in the interim. I asked him to distract me, and he told me an incredibly boring story about the science he’d used to devise his dimensional portal. It didn’t help at all, but I appreciated the effort.

When Stan got back, the contractions were almost right on top of each other. Ford measured again. Not yet, Teagan. I didn’t care anymore. Exertion had made time unreliable, and my memories of the following hour are indistinct. I know Stan was there holding my hand. I recall crying to someone that I just wanted it to be over. I remember Ford telling me I could push, and the moment when excitement came into his voice and he told me he could see the head. The rest is a blur.

Except for the moment I heard my daughter cry for the first time. Not a tiny sound, but a loud, demanding one. Already a force to be reckoned with, that was our girl. I started crying again.

Ford must have passed her to Stan while he coached me through expelling the afterbirth. I remember the sight of him holding her for the first time, a little pink figure covered in slime, grey cord still extending from her stomach, and for the first time since I’d met him I saw Stan openly cry. Ford clamped and cut the cord. Stan brought her up and showed her to me.

Dark hair, a full head of it. Tiny perfect nose. Eyes screwed shut as she screamed and flailed her small arms angrily. Someone put a cushion behind me, helping me sit up. Possibly the same someone put a fresh towel over my legs. Stan awkwardly held her out, and I took my baby into my arms.

As soon as he’d finished checking us both over, Ford either left the room or just slipped out of my range of interest. Everything in the world was this little girl and the man standing next to me as I fed her.

No, not everything. As relieved and blissful as I was right now, this was not my only child. “Do we tell the boys it’s over?” I asked Stan. “Let them come meet their sister?”

“Ford’s already telling them,” he answered with a smile. Oh. So that’s where he’d gone.

A knock on the door came a minute later. I tried to pry my nipple out of our little one’s mouth, but she was not having it. I was just readjusting my shirt when she realized what had happened and demanded in no uncertain terms that her source of food be returned to her. I laughed softly and looked over at Stan, who had joined me in sitting on the bed.

“Warned you about having my kid,” he said mildly.

“You did,” I agreed, and raised my voice to be heard over the baby. “Come in!”

All three boys trouped through the doorway, oldest to youngest. No Pacifica, that was a relief. I wondered what she’d been doing all this time. Not exactly a comfortable time to be company. Hopefully she’d been able to wipe the floor with the boys at their video games again.

The baby continued to scream.

I made a face at my kids and was rewarded with nervous smiles from all of them. “She wants more food,” I told them, still struggling to make myself heard. “But we wanted you to see that we’re both fine.” I grinned. “Feel free to run away again.”

They didn’t, though. They all came closer to have a proper look at their furious little sister. Nicky laughed and put his index finger against her palm; she grabbed it automatically. Dave studied her seriously, told us she was beautiful, and hugged me hard. Horace stared in wide-eyed amazement and commented on how tiny she was. At least I think that was what he said. It was hard to tell over the screaming.

I gave her back her food source, and she quieted immediately. Stan and I smirked at each other. “So…Horace?” I asked as she drank.

Stan nodded. “Ford’s getting it ready.”

I didn’t ask what that entailed. The fact that he was _using_ the placenta was as much information as I wanted on the subject. “They’ll do it in here though, right?”

“Sounds like there’s not really much to it, sweetie. They make some shape on the floor, he eats whatever the ingredients turned into, Ford says a few words in…probably Latin? I dunno.”

I stared at him in outrage. “I don’t care how simple it is! They’re _doing_ it in _here_!”

“You really think a baby crying is gonna help?”

“She’s not crying now,” I pointed out.

He looked like he wanted to argue but thought better of it. “I’ll go tell them.”

About ten minutes later, six people came into my bedroom. Between our bed, the dresser, the crib, and all used towels and medical crap there was barely room for them. But a hospital would never have allowed what we were about to do. My daughter was sleeping in my arms by then, and I was happily occupied with studying the insane perfection of her little fingernails. Everything in miniature, brand new, clean, beautiful. Seven pounds, seven ounces according to Ford’s scale. She had a small pale birthmark like a U on one knee. The few glimpses I’d had of her eyes so far revealed a beautiful deep blue that would undoubtedly darken to brown within a few months.

But. I had to drag my gaze away from the slow rise and fall of her chest. Ford stretched out long strips of masking tape, carefully arranging them into some kind of shape (probably a pentagon) on the scant empty stretch of floor remaining in the room. Dave and Nicky each placed several small bowls around the perimeter. Stan and Ford lit tea candles. I sincerely hoped we didn’t accidentally burn the house down.

“So are you going to tell us her name yet?” Dave demanded, coming to join me on the bed again. “She has one, right?”

“Of course she has one. In a minute.”

Ford ushered Horace into the designated area. He looked small and nervous. I blew him a kiss. “We’re your family no matter what, love,” I told him softly but clearly. A chorus of agreement came from the rest of the family. Pacifica hovered near the wall, apparently taking pictures with her phone. She looked interested, but also painfully aware that she was an outsider. There was a band-aid on the inside of her elbow.

Stan came to sit next to me and Dave. Nicky stubbornly waited just outside the masking tape. Ford passed Horace…a smoothie. Or what looked like a smoothie, anyway. It was a glass full of some thick liquid, and there was a straw sticking out of it. I tried not to think about what might be in this particular recipe.

Horace bravely took a sip. He gagged. We all waited, holding our breath. He took another sip, long and fast. His face contorted, but he didn’t give up. He shoved the straw to the side, brought the glass to his lips, and chugged it. The fact that he could chug a drink at all just proved how strong he already was.

The words Ford read from the screen of his phone didn’t sound Latin to me. They were somehow both harsher and smoother at the same time. Whatever the language was, I’d hazard a guess that it was far _older_ than Latin.

Nothing happened, visually. There was no dramatic flash of light, no colors, no visible palpitations of the air, no special effects at all. Not even a thunderclap. But I felt _something_ change, and judging from the way Stan and Dave went unnaturally still beside me, I could tell that I wasn’t the only one.

We all stared in silence for a minute. And then Horace, in a small voice, looked at Ford and asked “Is that it?”

Even Ford didn’t have the answer. His brow creased, and he stepped inside the line of tape to put two fingers along the inside of Horace’s throat. His eyebrows rose first, and then his lips followed until he was positively grinning. “I do believe that’s a pulse, my boy.”

Nicky jumped across the line, grabbing Horace and hugging him tightly.

“Ah,” Horace protested weakly. “Nicky, leggo, I can’t breathe!” Then he realized what he’d said. The look on his face was every bit as magical as my daughter’s first cry. Nick stepped back, and Horace took an experimental breath. He held it. Let it out. Tried again. “I’m breathing!” He screwed up his face, concentrating very hard, and did nothing. “I’m still corporeal! I was trying not to be!”

He looked over at Pacifica. “Are you recording this?” She nodded, silent tears trickling down her cheeks. “You can stop now,” Horace said. He looked at her and took a deep breath. “Can I hug you?”

“Um.” She sniffled daintily. “Yeah, okay. I guess.”

He did—gingerly, as if he was worried about getting her dirty. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

She shrugged awkwardly. “Well, you know. My great-grandpa _did_ kill you. It’s the least I could do.”

Horace beamed. “Send that video to Dipper,” he told her, excitement starting to crackle in his voice. He bounded up onto the bed and flung his arms around first me, then Stan, then Dave. He didn’t have any words for us. Words would have been utterly insufficient.

The hug woke up the baby. This time she didn’t cry, but stared up at us seriously, taking in the world.

“Would ya look at that,” said Stan in awe.

I kissed his cheek. “Guess she’s ready to meet her big brothers properly.”

Horace made a hiccupping sound that might have been laughter, tears, or both. “Hi there. I’m Horace.” He stopped and looked over at Stan. “Can I be Horace Pines?”

Stan shrugged magnanimously. “Don’t see why not, kid. We gotta doctor you up a new birth certificate anyhow, right?”

Horace grinned. Nicky shouldered his way in, trying to persuade his sister to grab his finger again. “And I’m Nick. I’m the one who knows everything, so you let me teach you all the cool stuff, okay?”

Dave rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. “Don’t listen to him, he only knows nerd stuff. Hey there, sis.” He broke his gaze away. “So what’s her _name_?”

Stan was staring at her, too. I knew the look on his face, because it was on mine, too. He was completely in love. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“Just tell us already!” Horace bounced impatiently. “I want to see if I can go _outside_!”

I nodded to Stan. We’d already agreed, after all. “Fortune,” he told the room at large. “Fortune Mabel Pines.”

*

“Shit. Ugh, I mean crap. No, you know, I _do_ mean shit! Hey Teegs, could you grab me some more wipes?”

“I’m shopping for houses,” I told him nonchalantly, only a tiny twitch at the corner of my mouth betraying my amusement. “There’s another pack at the bottom of the changing table.”

“Aw come on!” he protested. “Forty here got it all the way up her back. How does she _do_ that? And she’s _smiling_ at me!”

“That’s just gas, hon. When she actually smiles at you for the first time, you’ll know it.”

“It’s still pretty cute.” For a second, I could hear the smile in his voice, the incredible tenderness. “Augh, jeez, it smells like if death could barf!” I glanced over the top of my laptop and saw him crouching down to find more wipes, one hand still holding the squirming baby in place on top of the table. “Two more days! Two more days and then you are doing _all_ the diapers!”

“ _All_ of them?” I didn’t like the house on the screen much. The yard was tiny. “I don’t think that was part of the bet.”

I was right, and he knew it. He sighed. “ _Most_ of them?” he tried hopefully.

“Sure,” I agreed with a smile. “At least half.” Ooh, this house looked promising. Five bedrooms, three bathrooms, a basement office that might serve as a sixth room in a pinch, and a gorgeous kitchen. All the money we’d won in Vegas and then some—but we could pay for the whole thing upfront and never deal with monthly mortgage payments again. I clicked on it. “I mean, next month is the wedding, and you’re going to be busy running the Shack during the lead-up to it _and_ their honeymoon. I’ll be home alone with Fort, I’ll take care of the diapers.”

“Home alone,” he snorted. “Like the older kids won’t be all over the place?”

“What, and they’re going to be clamoring to change diapers for me? Besides, you know they’re going to be _out_ at least as much as they’re _in_.” I smiled again. “Even Horace.” He’d left the front porch the night Fort was born, for the first time in 94 years. Pacifica had thoughtfully sent me the pictures: a freckled blonde boy jumping up and down, nearly crying in excitement, in the fading daylight of Turner Street. He’d turned ten in July 1920. He was going to turn eleven in July 2015. Dave took him shopping for modern jeans and t-shirts, and he was slowly developing his own style in between doting on his sister, running around the Oregon spring, and eating everything in sight.

Fort herself was still lucky, from what I could tell: we still rarely hit red lights, everything people bought her fit perfectly, and we’d discovered that for whatever reason, she did _not_ glow. But the effects of her luck seemed to be milder now than when I’d been carrying her. Maybe the wide-open air distilled it, maybe too much of it had been used up on Horace, who knew. I was relieved, frankly. A little good luck was nice. A _lot_ of good luck would have made it difficult for her to live a normal life.

Not that she was ever going to have a _normal_ life, growing up in Gravity Falls. With an aging conman father, a glowing mother, a genius uncle, a wannabe rock star brother, a dungeon master brother, and a brother who’d come back from the dead, she’d never stood a chance at _normal_. But normal was overrated, anyhow. I loved our weird family.

“Here.” Stan deposited Fortune down on the bed next to me and went to wash his hands. I shoved my laptop to the other side at once and turned all my attention on her. She was growing into a beautiful baby, but she was certainly a force to be reckoned with. Unless she was asleep or eating, she wanted to see everything. If she was prevented from looking the way she wanted—or prevented from kicking her little legs, or had something taken away from her—she would scream. She adored her daddy, though. I was a useful source of food and comfort, but I swear she and Stan could spend half the day staring at each other. She particularly seemed to like grabbing his nose. And she definitely knew the sound of his voice. She’d turn her head toward it every single time.

Mabel had been over the moon when she’d been informed of the baby’s middle name. And she’d been the first to appreciate all the implications of her first name, too. “Are you going to call her Fort for short? Oh my gosh! That sounds just like Ford! Did you name her after Grunkle Ford, too?” When Stan confirmed this, his twin had actually gotten _emotional_ and embraced him. Of course Ford was back on the east coast right now, but he’d be back for a real vacation in July. Dipper and Mabel were arriving for the summer in three weeks. My parents were coming back for a week in August, but I’d arranged for them to stay at one of the rental cottages we’d originally used when _we_ came to Gravity Falls. It was a good thing I didn’t start my new job until the end of summer, because the coming months were going to be absolutely packed.

Fortune stared up at me, realized she was back with her mom, and kicked her legs in excitement. I smiled helplessly, overcome with love for this tiny person. “Feel better?” I asked her, walking my fingers over her tummy. “Daddy got you in some nice clean clothes?”

“ _All_ the way up the back,” Stan reiterated, flopping down on her other side and tickling the bottoms of her feet. “You’re disgusting, kid.”

She turned her head toward him at once, legs kicking even harder. Stan sensibly set his glasses on the bedside table before allowing her to flail her arms near his face. Fortune got her fingers around one of his ears and locked them into a death grip. “Ow,” Stan laughed. “Ow! Hey cut it out, okay fine, you’re beautiful, jeez!” There was no way she’d understood a word of what he was saying. But she let go.

I rested a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you. I think she was gearing up to demand food again.”

“Again?”

“It’s all I’m good for.” I shrugged, amused more than wounded.

“Nah.” Stan shuffled across the mattress so that we could be side by side as we looked down at her. “You’re good for loads of stuff.” He slipped his arm around my waist, which had almost returned to its pre-pregnancy size already (due more to nature than any active effort, since I spent most of my free time catching up on sleep these days). “You’re good _at_ loads of stuff,” he amended.

I kissed his cheek. “It can be both.”

He kissed me back, this one on the lips. I enjoyed it for a few long seconds before pulling back to glance down at the baby. She was totally fine. Though she was staring at us. Stan made a face. “She’s watching us make out. That’s weird. Kinda creepy.”

“She has no idea what she’s seeing,” I smiled. “Anyway, we’re the Pines. _Weird_ and _kinda creepy_ are our family motto.”

“We have a family motto?”

“Of course we do.” I kissed him again. “It’s printed right below the crest of a pine tree and teakettle on the flag Mabel made.”

Stan stared at me seriously. “I can’t tell if you’re joking or not.”

I laughed. “Does it really matter?”

“Yeah!” He puffed out his chest. “I’ve always wanted a family crest.”

“Then we’ll hang it in the entryway of our new home,” I promised him. “Here, tell me what you think of this house.”


End file.
